NCRI – A senior ranking cleric in the Iranian regime has said in unprecedentedly blunt remarks that at no time in the regime’s 30 year history has it faced so many diverse threats.
According to the state-run ILNA news agency on Tuesday, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and Chair of the Assembly of Experts in the clerical regime, warned the theocracy’s officials that unless his remarks are taken seriously, things will take a turn for the worst.
“Today, the situation in the region and especially inside Iran itself is not suitable,” Rafsanjani told members of the mullahs’ Assembly of Experts.
“In the past 30 years … we had never seen the arrogant powers have such a large number of ominous designs against the Islamic Republic. We have never had so many resolutions against us. There are sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency and independent governments, who are working to increase the impact of their plots against” the Iranian regime.
Rafsanjani highlighted the regime’s nuclear weapons program and human rights violations as two central challenges the regime is grappling with at the international level.
Noting the latest report by the IAEA on the regime’s nuclear program, he said, “The IAEA director claims in this report that Iran has barred the agency’s inspectors from visiting nuclear facilities, and he has also taken a tougher line against our nuclear activities saying that they are tending towards militarization.”
Rafsanjani, who also heads the mullahs’ Expediency Council, warned, “We have never been subjected to so many sanctions and I ask that all of you and all officials take these sanctions seriously and not as a joke.”
Rafsanjani said there is also a threat against the mullahs’ Supreme Leader, which is the “core of Islam, the revolution and clergy.”
Noting the growing divisions and factional feuding in the regime, Rafsanjani voiced worries, saying, “Today, they have targeted our unity and unity has given its place to divisions. … Today we are facing divisions.”
He also indirectly admitted to the regime’s declining regional power and opposition to its meddling in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
In his speech, Rafsanjani prayed to God not to “subject anyone to such catastrophes.”
