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Yasmeen Manteghi

A website affiliated with the Ahmadinejad supporters accused Ayatollah Khomeini’s ‎grandson, Seyyed Hassan Khomeini, of exploiting government resources during former ‎president Khatami’s term. ‎

Recently, in a meeting with members of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, ‎Seyyed Hassan Khomeini harshly criticized the decision to bar hundreds of reformist ‎candidates from running in upcoming parliamentary elections. Also, a day after the joint ‎commander of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij explicitly voiced his and the ‎military’s support for hardliner candidates, Seyyed Hassan Khomeini said, “the presence ‎of military forces in politics means that the republic has abandoned the path of the ‎Imam.” ‎

Although several high commanders in the Revolutionary Guards, including the Guards’ ‎new chief, Aziz Jafari, announced last week in a meting with Basiji students that the ‎Guads will back hardliner candidates, in an interview with the weekly Shahrvand ‎Emrooz, Seyyed Hassan Khomeini affirmed that Ayatollah Khomeini was opposed to ‎military’s intervention in politics, adding, “people who claim that they are faithful to ‎Imam [Khomeini], must be sensitive to implementation of Imam’s explicit orders… If ‎that is not case, either they are lying or they are not being consistent.” ‎

Last Friday, in a meeting with members of the Participation Front’s central committee, ‎while condemning the widespread disqualification of reformist and independent ‎candidates, Hassan Khomeini said, “this problem is not only limited to you; it includes ‎many friends from various groups in the society, which is very unfortunate.” ‎

Seyyed Hassan Khomeini’s criticism was voiced at a time when another of Ayatollah ‎Khomeini’s grandsons, Ali Eshraghi, who spent much of his childhood with the late ‎ayatollah and appears in many photographs alongside the ayatollah, was barred by the ‎Guardian Council from running in upcoming parliamentary elections. ‎

Responding to news of his disqualification, Ali Eshraghi said, “As far as I know, I was ‎disqualified by the oversight committee after the conclusion of local investigations,” in ‎which friends and neighbors of Eshraghi were questioned as to whether he prays, fasts, ‎shaves his face, smokes, drives an expensive car, or forces his wife to wear appropriate ‎Islamic clothing.‎

Responding to the criticism of Seyyed Hassan Khomeini, the website “Nosazi,” which is ‎run by the Ahmadinejad supporters, accused Seyyed Hassan Khomeini of exploiting the ‎government’s resources for his personal gain. Directly addressing ayatollah Khomeini’s ‎grandson, the website wrote: “Dear Mr. Seyyed Hassan Khomeini, if we had the same ‎power under the reformist government to buy an eight hundred million rial BMW, which ‎was bought for you, were able to breathe in the clean air of the suburbs, and did not miss ‎a steam room appointment… then we too would have been able to speak about the poor ‎with fattened cheeks and defend the rights of the Participation Front.” ‎