Arash Aramesh

Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor in chief of Kayhan and mouthpiece for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote an editorial attacking new figures in the conservative wing of the Islamic Republic who are not 100 percent in line with the radical policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the recent crackdown on dissidents inside Iran.

Shariatmadari’s new target was Ali Motahhari, a conservative member of parliament. On a live television broadcast, Motahhari said last week that the problems in Iran began when Ahmadinejad overstepped the boundaries of respect and decency during the presidential debates last spring. During those debates, Ahmadinejad accused Mir Hossein Moussavi’s wife of having earned multiple degrees simultaneously which is against the law in Iran. Also, Ahmadinejad said the sons of Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani were corrupt and involved in illegal financial activities.

According to Ali Motahhari, this began the bitter cycle of what he called “personal grudges,” which has lasted up to this day. This conservative member f parliament also dared to say that both sides of the conflict used violence in their treatment of each other. This contradicted the government’s official position that only the opposition has been violent against the police and the security forces. Motahhari also proposed that mediation be held between the two fighting parties in order to resolve the national crisis.

Shariatmadari, who is the representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Kayhan, wrote an editorial calling Motahhari’s ideas foolish and ignorant. He rejected calls made by moderate conservatives to reach out to the opposition. He wrote: “The leaders of sedition were carrying out the plans of the U.S. and Israel.” Shariatmadari even went further by claiming that the opposition and its leaders were no longer within the Islamic Republic and they were now in the same category as other counterrevolutionaries, such as the monarchists and the Mojahedin Khalgh Organization (MKO).

Mr. Shariatmadari’s missive is remarkable for it shows that the radicals are unwilling to reach out to moderate conservatives, let alone the opposition headed by Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The radical wing of the conservative faction, which has members in every civilian and military branch of the government, views calls for national unity and rapprochement as a sign of defeat for their plan to eliminate the reformists and moderates from Iran’s political landscape.

The current clash widens the existing cleavage between the moderate and the radical wings of the so-called conservative political faction and further alienates those who are loyal supporters of the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader, but do not support the government’s policies regarding the opposition.