TEHRAN - Iranian ex-president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani Sunday defied criticism from the country’s leading clergy, continuing to insist on the release of all political prisoners.
“My standpoint is the same as I mentioned in the Friday prayers (July 17),” Rafsanjani said in a meeting with university professors in Tehran.
In his Friday prayer sermon, Rafsanjani had said that the country was in a crisis, and he demanded the immediate release of all political detainees as the first step out of the crisis.
The conservative clergy decried his remarks as an effort to undermine the Islamic system in Iran, in line with the country’s opposition headed by Mir-Hossein Moussavi.
According to Fars news agency Sunday, 65 of the 88 cleric members of the Experts Assembly, the leading clergy body in Iran, called on Rafsanjani to clarify his loyalty to the establishment.
The clerics had also called on him to clarify his loyalty to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The leader and I have been friends for over 50 years, and we have been through ups and downs of the revolution together,” said Rafsanjani, indicating that the clerics should not worry about his relationship with the leadership.
Due to the support of Ayatollah Khamenei for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani’s support for the reformist movement in general - and Moussavi in particular - there has been speculation about differences between the country’s two top clerics.
According to the ILNA news agency, the 75-year-old moderate expressed hope that the current crisis - triggered by alleged fraud in the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - could still be settled.
“A mistake by a party, person or political group can be compensated, but if the whole system is questioned, then it would be difficult to repair the damage,” Rafsanjani warned.
“We can still expose to the world a suitable and practical model of Islam, but this needed a correct management.”
Rafsanjani did not clarify whether Ahmadinejad was capable of delivering the “correct management”.
Rafsanjani, who heads the Experts Assembly, hoped that Khamenei would avail himself of his experience and move forward toward settling the current problems.
According to official statistics, out of more than 1,000 protestors arrested after the election, more than 100 are still in jail.
The detainees are not only demonstrators, journalists and dissidents but also former ministers and parliament deputies.
Rafsanjani had criticised the government for lacking tolerance with “our own people” and demanded the immediate release of all detainees.
He was one of the main architects of the 1979 Islamic revolution, a close aide to late supreme leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, parliament speaker, president from 1989-97 and now head of the Experts Assembly.
Ahmadinejad, however, pushed Rafsanjani into the opposition corner after he accused him and his family of corruption and seeking political hegemony.
Rafsanjani is now close to Mussavi and former president Mohammad Khatami and therefore under severe criticism from Iran’s ultraconservative factions and clergy circles.
Rafsanjani has several times stressed that despite his criticism, he has never been after undermining the ruling system in Iran but is just seeking to properly implement the constitution.
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