by Mark Silva
If you like American political campaigns and debates, you'll love the slugfest they're having in Tehran, where a former president has called on the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to referee the match.
The already-turbulent Iranian election campaign "took a dramatic turn today,'' the Guardian reports, as one of the nation's senior politicians accused President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of lying in a televised debate last week. "In an unprecedented public appeal, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to rein in the president, who in the debate last week accused Rafsanjani of corruption.''
Last week, millions of Iranians had tuned in for a donnybrook featuring Ahmadinejad and NIr Hossein Mousavi, the leading reformist contender for the presidency. The incumbent repeatedly attempted to tie Mousavi to Rafsanjani and another ex-resident, Mohammad Khatami, whose governments Ahmadinejad claimed were corrupt.
In a letter to the ayatollah, published by the semi-official Mehr news agency, the former president asserted that tens of millions of Iranians had witnessed "mis-statements and fabrications" during the debate.
Rafsanjani told the ayatollah: "I am expecting you to resolve this position in order to extinguish the fire, whose smoke can be seen in the atmosphere, and to foil dangerous plots to take action.''
Comments
Maybe moderates can hold Imadinnerjacket's feet to the flames.
Posted by: bill r. | June 9, 2009 3:34 PM
If the Ayatollah does a good job of sorting this out, maybe the Democratic Party can ask him to sort out the rules regarding allotment of delegates when the DNC flip flops on its rulings at convention time. Now THAT would really be diversity in action.
Posted by: John W. | June 10, 2009 4:28 PM