TEHRAN: Iranian opposition champion Mir Hossein Mousavi has hit back at accusations by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he was siding with Tehran’s foes, charging that it was the regime that was playing into their hands.
Mousavi, once a pillar of the regime but now one of its most bitter critics, said that the damage wrought on the economy and society by the "cult" government of hard line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was what was helping Iran’s enemies.
"It should be asked who has presented a golden opportunity to US, Israel, the hypocrites and the monarchists with all these destructive, non-transparent and misleading policies?," the former prime minister said in a statement posted on his Kaleme.com website late on Saturday.
"Is it those who seek freedom and justice or dubious cults which have devastated the lives of labourers, teachers and farmers?" he asked.
The new war of words between the regime and the opposition has sharpened political divisions in the run-up to threatened street protests to mark the first anniversary on June 12 of Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election.
Khamenei, whose intervention was decisive in giving the hard line incumbent a new four-year term, had used a keynote address marking the 21st anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to accuse the opposition of giving succour to the revolution’s foes at home and abroad.
"One cannot accept a person who claims to be a follower of Imam (Khomeini), while the US, Britain, the CIA, the Mossad, the monarchists and the hypocrites support him," he said in Friday’s speech.
Hypocrites is the regime’s standard term of abuse for the rebel People’s Mujahedeen, which alongside supporters of the Western-backed shah overthrown in the 1979 revolution, is its most loathed domestic enemy.
Regime leaders frequently blame internal dissent on the machinations of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israel’s Mossad spy service or agents of Britain.
Mousavi took particular issue with the treatment meted out to Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan, at Friday’s commemorations for the death of his grandfather.
The younger Khomeini was heckled by hardline supporters of Ahmadinejad’s government and was forced to abandon his planned speech after just a few words.
Mousavi said the heckling was "engineered", adding: "It is needless to say that such engineered actions make it more important to protect the descendants of the Imam."
The war of words over who represents the true legacy of Khomeini’s revolutionary leadership has created a highly charged political atmosphere in which actions like the drowning out of his grandson’s speech have become a routine occurrence.
In his address on Friday, Khamenei warned that former closeness to the revolutionary leader was no guarantee of loyalty to his teachings, in an apparent reference to Mousavi’s period as premier under Khomeini’s leadership.
The cleric recalled that some of Khomeini’s earliest supporters had betrayed the regime and been punished accordingly.
"Some came with the Imam from Paris and, after a while, due to treason, were hanged," he said, referring to Khomeini’s return from exile in the French capital which triggered the 1979 revolution.
Ahmadinejad too used his address at Friday’s commemorations for Khomeini to warn opposition leaders that past loyalties and high office counted for nothing in assessing commitment to the values of the revolution.
"Whoever deviates from the path of Imam, whatever power he holds, will be thrown away by the strong hand of the people," the hard line president said.
