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WEEKLY
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Iran’s warring factions urged to follow Khamenei
Sunday, August 23, 2009
TEHRAN: Powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged Iran’s warring political groups on Saturday to follow the orders of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for ending the present political turmoil.
In his first such statement in direct support of Khamenei since the June 12 election, the former president said “the current situation needs everyone to observe the leader’s decrees and advice,” Iranian news agencies reported.
Rafsanjani was speaking at the start of a meeting of Iran’s top political arbitration body, the Expediency Council, which he heads.
He urged the bitterly divided groups to create “appropriate conditions to act and commit to the constitution ... and confront law breakers, whatever their ideological leanings.”
A supporter of the opposition, Rafsanjani distanced himself from Khamenei in a Friday prayer sermon last month and said the election had triggered a “crisis” in the country.
His comments, which came after a month of street protests marred by violence, were seen as a defiant stance in contradiction to the one adopted by Khamenei, who publicly defended Ahmadinejad’s victory.
On Saturday, Rafsanjani called for the current “excited and emotional atmosphere” to be replaced by a “wise one.”
He said authorities must follow Khamenei’s advice also on the issue of political detainees jailed in the aftermath of the election.
“The way out of the current situation is commitment to the leader’s advice on detainees of recent events and retrieving the rights of those whose rights have been violated,” he said.
Opposition leaders, mainly defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, have charged that detainees have been raped, tortured and beaten in prisons.
The authorities have dismissed these allegations, but closed a detention centre south of Tehran following orders from Khamenei.
Rafsanjani also reiterated a previous call for the media to avoid fuelling “disunity” in society.
Meanwhile, Iran’s conservative clerics have objected to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s decision to include three women in his new cabinet, a report said on Saturday, dealing a blow to the hardliner’s bid to secure parliament’s nod for his ministerial line-up. Ahmadinejad named Sousan Keshvaraz, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi and Fatemeh Ajorlou as his ministers respectively of education, health, and welfare and social security in his 21-member cabinet.
“Although it is a new idea to choose women as ministers, there are religious doubts over the abilities of women when it comes to management. This should be considered by the government,” Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, the head of the clerics’ faction in the 290-member conservative-dominated Iranian parliament was quoted as saying by the conservative daily Tehran Emrouz.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
