Mohammadreza Naghdi, head of Iran’s Basij militia says the Iranian reformists are more “adversarial” than the “terrorists of the eighties” in Iran.
Fars news agency reported that on Saturday Naghdi spoke in a gathering in “memory of the martyrs of combat against terrorism.” He insisted that the “monafeghin” [Islamic Republic’s reference to the exiled dissident group, People’s Mojahedin Organization] were easier to confront because “they revealed their heresy and took arms against us. He went on to refer to the reformists as the “new monafeghin” adding that “while they have collaborated many times with the US and the Zionists, they still try to act as if their actions were justified and they speak of following the path of the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic] and he Revolutions.”
The Islamic Republic refers to the People’s Mojahedin Organization as the terrorist group of Monafeghin because in the eighties they took arms against the Islamic Republic.
Head of Basij militia went on to implicitly accuse the top reformist figures of consorting with foreign countries and getting financial support and political direction from Iran’s “enemies.”
Iranian establishment refers to the 2009 election protests that were triggered by the allegations of fraud in the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “sedition.”
He said: “These people were exposed in the sedition of 2009 and yet they are still complaining and every night they gather to make plans how to create disturbance and enter the arena or god forbid, deceive the people.”
He went on to add: “When we ask these ‘monafeghin’ what are these actions, they say we are reformists.”
He insisted that the reformists are “corrupted individuals that are trying to attribute their actions to the path of the Imam.”
Since 1997, when Mohammad Khatami was elected president of Iran, Khatami and his supporters were referred to as the reformists in Iranian politics and his administration which attempted to create a level of openness in society was referred to as the reformist government.
The government has arrested and incarcerated thousands of election protesters in the past two years and put the reformists candidates of the 2009 presidential elections under house arrest. The reformists have been very critical of the treatment of election protesters in the past two years. They have repeatedly called for the opening of the political atmosphere and the media and an end to the security air taking hold in the country.
