Iran’s Guardian Council member dismisses letter on alleged ‘successor to Leader’

Ahmad Khatami said the letter that has recently surfaced in cyberspace by the election headquarters of defeated presidential candidate Saeed Jalili lacks any validity or truth.

The letter, which bears the signature of the election headquarters’ controversial head Mohsen Mansouri, alleges that Khatami has clarified the reasons behind the approval of now President-Elect Massoud Pezeshkian by the Guardian Council to run for president as the sole candidate of the disgruntled reformist camp, a decision which did not sit well with the conservatives who fielded four candidates.

It further claims that the Leader had given the Guardian Council the go-ahead to ratify Pezeshkian’s qualifications as a candidate to woo a large section of disillusioned voters to the ballot box.

The letter also alleges that the government needs to win back a strong popular base it lost in economic and social turmoil, as the country is going through a sensitive juncture of electing the Leader’s successor before the month of Azar on the Iranian calendar (November 21).

Khatami, however, said the “desperate behavior is one of the attempts by the enemy that seeks to fish in troubled waters of the elections, in their false imagination.”