Ahmadinejad Illegitimate As Is

After seven members of the reformist Mosharekat Party and the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Party filed separately filed complaints against “lawbreaking military officers during the tenth presidential election” and emphasized the occurrence of an “electoral coup” – citing statements of a senior commander in the Islamic Passdaran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) – the Mosharekat party on Friday released an open letter to the judiciary chief calling on him to either investigate the coup or “resign.”

In its open letter to Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, citing the statements of the senior IRGC officer, Mosharekat wrote, “The widespread distribution of taped statements from Commander Moshfegh, a senior figure at the Sarallah base, removed the curtain from the electoral coup in the tenth presidential election and proved the truth of the green movement leaders’ claim that the election was engineered. This individual, who speaks frankly, ignorantly and with a drunkenness from power, about organizing the coup, clearly admits to actions that cannot be referred to as anything other than a coup in any school of political thought.”

Mosharekat’s letter refers to the statements of a senior intelligence officer at nationwide conference for the clergy in Mashhad last year. In his statements, the officer accused figures such as Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami, Mohammad Mousavi-Khoeiniha and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as well as reformist parties such as the Combatant Clergy Association, Line of Imam Coalition, Mosharekat, Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution, Kargozaran, Hambastegi and Mardomsalari of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic and “toppling ayatollah Khamenei from supreme leadership.” In his statements, the officer declares several times that “we,” knowing the plan, “foiled their [the reformists’] plot and didn’t allow them to continue.”

Although the IRGC officer’s statements were made last fall, the taped recording of his remarks was widely distributed beginning in early summer this year. Previously, Mir-Hossein Mousavi commented on the remarks, characterizing them as an attempt to justify the regime’s post-election repression and dismissing them as “full of blatant lies and cheap tales.”

Last week, seven senior members of the Mosharekat Party and the Mojahedin of Islamic Revolution Party, who were simultaneously arrested last year following the election and are currently either in jail or on temporary release, used the senior IRGC commander’s remarks as evidence to file a complaint against “a group of military” officers who broke the law during the tenth presidential election.

In their latest letter to the judiciary chief, Mosharekat party wrote, “Now that it has been uncovered that the person who was introduced as the president reached that post through a coup (and not just fraud), lacking any kind of legal or Islamic legitimacy, it is your duty to forward the matter to the supreme court for investigation.”

The letter added, “We hereby also request from your dear brother, the head of the legislative branch, to carry out his duty with respect to examining this person’s qualification, although he is illegitimate as is given the clear and detailed admission to the coup from coup perpetrators themselves.”