NCRI – The decision of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to announce his candidacy for the Iranian regime’s sham presidential elections, despite Ali Khamenei’s extensive efforts to prevent him from doing so, has given unprecedented dimensions to the regime’s internal crises and rifts.
In recent days, using a variety of channels including the Minister of Intelligence and Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan daily, Khamenei had described Rafsanjani as “Mohareb” (waging war against God) and “corrupt on earth” who deserves to be prosecuted and punished.
The registration of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s preferred candidate, who has been described by Khamenei and his faction as “the inspiration of the deviant current,” has further fuelled and deepened rifts and crises within the religious fascism.
Meanwhile, continual splits and divisions within Khamenei’s own faction demonstrate the depth of the crisis in the regime of Velayet-e-Faqih. Groups within this faction, who had previously agreed to each nominating one candidate, failed to overcome their differences and as a result several individuals entered the race from each group.
For example, Mohmmad-Baqer Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister, and Haddad Adel, whose daughter is married to Khamenei’s son, each registered separately.
Other individuals have also entered the race from Khamenei’s faction, including Manouchehr Mottaki, Abutorabi, Sadeq Lankarani and Saeed Jalili, the regime’s chief nuclear negotiator.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, stated that with Rafsanjani’s candidacy for the mullahs’ presidential elections, the ruling regime has now undergone a qualitative transformation.
She said that the centralized and unipolar power structure that Khamenei had built for himself in the process of closing the religious dictatorship’s ranks subsequent to the First Persian Gulf War (1991), the war in Afghanistan (2001), the war in Iraq (2003) and the disarmament of the Iranian opposition (2003), led to the eight-year presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Mrs. Rajavi added that four years ago, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad suppressed the Iranian people’s uprising, but subsequently Ahmadinejad himself entered into gruelling competition with Khamenei. That era has now come to a close, and with the introduction of Rafsanjani and Rahim Mashaei into the power struggle against Khamenei, the trend of the regime’s disintegration and deterioration has intensified at an unprecedented level, and will further accelerate its eventual downfall.
She noted that the candidacy of Rafsanjani, as someone who ridiculed Khamenei’s slogans about creating a “political epic” and an “economic epic,” truly reflects the crisis of a faltering regime that since 1980 has been able to survive thanks to four major wars, the first of which was the eight year war with Iraq which Khomeini dubbed “a divine blessing.”
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 12, 2013
