Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, accused former reformist President Mohammad Khatami and his ally, Mir Hossein Moussavi, of seeking to topple the Iranian regime, following two separate statements, in which they called for radical reforms in the country.
The two statements, which were issued days before the commemoration of the 1979 revolution, pointed to the numerous crises in Iran, and the general dissatisfaction and frustration with the ruling body.
However, they expressed a conflicting position on the “effectiveness” of the constitution of the Islamic Republic in Iran.
Khatami stated that reform was possible with a return to the “spirit of the constitution” in the republic.
“People have the right to despair of the regime,” he said, rejecting however calls to overthrow the ruling authority.
Khatami’s positions conflicted with those of his reformist ally, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has been placed under house arrest since February 2011, after he rejected the results of the 2009 presidential elections and led the Green Revolution protests along with another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi.
Mousavi called for drafting a new constitution and submitting it to a popular referendum, followed by a “free and fair” vote to change the structure of political power in Iran.
He criticized the “obstinacy” of the authorities and their insistence on repressive methods in the recent protests, instead of dialogue and persuasion. Pointing to Iran’s increasing problems, he said that the biggest crisis was the contradictory structure of the country that was no longer viable.
Commenting on the statements of Mousavi and Khatami, Javan, which is affiliated with the IRGC Political Bureau, wrote that the two Iranian politicians implied the overthrow of the regime and the legal institutions in the Islamic Republic.
The newspaper saw that Mousavi’s statement officially called for “toppling the regime,” while Khatami used another rhetoric with the same aim to attack the structure of the Iranian ruling authority.
