Iran: Intelligence Minister Warns Against Opposition
Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi says a group of the president’s allies has joined with the people who protested the results of the 2009 election, but his ministry will not allow them to “derail” the coming elections.
“The sedition movement and the deviant current are seriously in conflict with the regime and the leadership for their own specific reasons,” Moslehi told the meeting of the Assembly of Experts today.
The Islamic Republic establishment refers to the 2009 election protesters as seditionists and it calls the allies of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, headed by his chief of staff Esfanidar Rahim Mashai, a “deviant current” against the regime.
Moslehi maintained that both groups are trying to rid the system of velayat faqih [the leadership of expert clergy].
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warned that Iran’s enemies may try to exploit election irregularities, and he urged the people and the government to safeguard the process.
Moslehi listed talking points that enemies use to attack the Islamic Republic system: “an emphasis on nationalism and semi-modernism; the insistence that Islam and the clergy are not efficient.”
The deputy head of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammadreza Bahonar, had previously noted that the “deviant current” does not support the clergy’s current role.
Iranian parliamentary elections are to be held in March, and the establishment is wary of possible unrest, in view of the widespread protests that threw the country into months of upheaval over allegations of vote fraud.
