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Iran’s leaders warn dissidents who have strayed from Khomeini legacy

04 June 2010 22:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Iran’s leaders warned political dissidents Friday that they have strayed from the Islamic Republic’s path, the latest threats in a purge of politicians who once followed the Islamic revolutionary leadership but who are now aligned with the country’s vocal opposition, APA reports quoting â€œThe Washington Postâ€.
In key speeches, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, also condemned Israel’s deadly raid early Monday on a pro-Palestinian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip. Khamenei predicted the end of the Jewish nation, telling millions of worshipers that Israel is "falling into the valley of death" because of strategic blunders.
Speaking during the 21st anniversary of the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the two leaders said politicians with more moderate interpretations of Khomeini’s will and edicts have betrayed his legacy.
Khamenei reminded throngs of worshipers at a memorial prayer rally how some of the closest allies of the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution were executed after being labeled traitors.
"What counts is how people behave in the present," he said, "not what they did in the past."
Ahmadinejad said he was amazed by some politicians "who say they were following Khomeini’s [anti-Western] edicts, while they stand beside United States with their actions."
The comments came a little more than a week before the sensitive first anniversary of Iran’s disputed June 12, 2009, presidential election. Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, was declared the winner, but his chief rivals charged that his victory was secured through massive vote fraud, and they launched a campaign of street protests that was soon crushed by security forces in a bloody crackdown.
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei were clearly referring to the opposition movement’s political leaders, who have firm roots in Iran’s political system. Mir Hossein Mousavi was prime minister in the 1980s and a favorite of Khomeini, while Shiite Muslim cleric Mehdi Karroubi formerly served as speaker of parliament. In speeches and statements, they have accused Ahmadinejad and his supporters of a silent coup d’etat and of turning the Islamic Republic into a dictatorship.
Worshipers at Friday’s prayer rally responded by shouting, "Death to Mousavi." Despite previous calls for their arrest and punishment, both men remain free.
The speeches, broadcast live on several state television channels, appeared to signal the final phase of a decade-long battle over the political direction of the Islamic Republic, a struggle that broke out after Khomeini’s death in 1989. Since then, a reformist movement has promoted a dynamic, more modern version of Islam, while conservative ideologues want to rule the country through an activist brand of Islam based on dogmatic principles. Khamenei made clear he now fully supports the latter.
Last year’s election and the months of street protests that followed Ahmadinejad’s disputed landslide victory led to the arrest and conviction of hundreds of politicians, journalists and academics critical of the government. Their parties were dissolved, access to state television was cut off, and their gatherings were declared illegal.
Between Friday’s speeches by Ahmadinejad and Khameni, their hard-liner supporters heckled Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan Khomeini, who is widely seen as a critic of the government. The crowd, largely made up of paramilitary Basij units, made it almost impossible for him to speak, forcing him to cut short his homage to his grandfather. The hard-liners continuously shouted slogans saying that Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah -- not Hassan Khomeini -- was the real grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini.
"As you can see, a number of friends are not allowing me to speak," Hassan Khomeini, a mi-ranking Shiite cleric, said in the live broadcast on state television. "Only 20 years have passed since the imam’s demise, and already people are disrespecting him," he said, referring to his grandfather.
Afterward, Hassan Khomeini was shown sitting in the audience, looking visibly distressed.
Khamenei, who took the stage after him, made no mention of the incident. At the end of his speech, he commented on Israel’s attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
"This [attack] is because of their barbaric nature," said Khamenei. "This is what the Islamic Republic has been saying for the past 30 years, and yet the two-faced, hypocrite and lying Westerners turn a blind eye to it. Today, the entire world has seen how barbaric their [Israel’s] nature is."
Iran’s top leader summed up what he called "grave mistakes" in Israel’s strategies: the war with Lebanon in 2006, the attack on Gaza in 2008 and the recent raid on the aid ships.
"These mistakes, one after another, show that the usurper Zionist regime is step by step approaching its final destination, falling into the valley of death," Khamenei said.