Iran’s Supreme Leader says reformists can participate in the coming election if they “admit to being in error” in the last presidential election, the head of Iran’s Assembly of Experts has reported.
The Khabar-on-line website reports that in an interview, Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani said: “[Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei] says anyone that comes and says I believe in these principles, the constitution, the Revolution, Islam and the leadership, even if they have different tastes, they should not be churned away from the Revolution.”
Kani added that he had inquired specifically about the reformists and the Supreme Leader had responded: “If they came and admitted that they were in error, then it is not a problem. They can come and say at a certain time, we made a mistake and now we understand and do not want to repeat those errors.”
The reformists challenged the outcome of the 2009 presidential elections, maintaining that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory had been rigged and, in fact, the true winner was MirHosein Mousavi, their top candidate.
The allegations threw Iran into one of its most serious crises since the 1979 Revolution, with mass demonstrations across the country.
The government cracked down severely on the demonstrators and arrested scores of top reformist figures, handing them stiff prison sentences. Mousavi and fellow reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest since last February.
The elections headquarters recently announced that two reformists parties, the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution, will not be allowed to participate in the elections as they have been banned from political activity.
Many senior reformists have announced that they will boycott the elections to protest the closed political atmosphere and the government’s refusal to release political prisoners. They have also questioned whether the elections could be “open and transparent” in the current political atmosphere.
