Arash Aramesh

Major General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said yesterday, “Universities are not in a good condition. The presence of those who care for the revolution, the elites loyal to Imam Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, and the constitution is missing [in universities].”

In an event called the “Gathering of IRGC’s Cultural Elites,” Safavi, who is now Ayatollah Khamenei’s senior military adviser, said, “The purpose of a soft war is to change cultures, values, and the beliefs of the youth.” He asserted, “We are vulnerable in the cultural debate and our enemies have realized this. Therefore, we can fight this aggressive culture and defeat it through soft cultural power.”

Safavi’s comments came a few days after Iran’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology who had called on university presidents not to hire secular and disloyal faculty. This time, however, one of Iran’s highest ranking military officers accused members of the academia of disloyalty to the regime and to the supreme leader.

Safavi did specify which domestic actors were behind this soft threat but many analysts believe that the soft cultural threat Safavi was referring to are the members of Iran’s academia, including university students. The tense relationship between the government and Iranian students is evidence that the hardliners are dissatisfied with the status quo and seek an ideological and political cleansing in Iran’s centers of higher learning.

During the “Gathering of IRGC’s Cultural Elites,” Ali Saidi-Shahroudi, Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative to the IRGC, said, “The cultural elite of the IRGC have an important role in the cultural revolution,” strengthening suspicions that a cultural revolution is underway to cleanse Iran’s centers of higher learning from students and faculty members who are not regime loyalists.

According to Sepah News, the official website of the IRGC, Saidi-Shahroudi said, “[implementing] cultural revolution is time consuming and tiring but once successfully implemented, it will guarantee the stability of a monotheistic revolution.”

In recent weeks, the Research Deputy for the Supreme Leader’s Representative’s Office in Iran’s Universities created a new bureau on Iran’s major campuses called “The Office of the Supreme Leader’s Demand,” through which cultural and religious reforms demanded by the Supreme Leader will be implemented.