‎According to informed sources in Tehran, during last week’s meeting between former ‎president Mohammad Khatami and Iran’s supreme leader ayatollah Khamenei, the latter ‎put his stamp of approval on the recent massive disqualifications of moderate candidates ‎for the upcoming Majlis elections in March 2008. He is reported to have specifically ‎desired the disqualification of candidates who were MPs in the sixth Majlis (the ‎forthcoming elections are for the eight Majlis) and had staged a sit-in protest against the ‎disqualification of a group of candidates for the seventh Majlis. ‎

Khatami met ayatollah Khamenei following a meeting that he had with two other leading ‎Iranian politicians, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mehdi Karubi in which the three discussed ‎their concerns regarding the massive disqualifications. It is reported that after Khatami ‎expressed his concerns to Khamenei regarding the rejections and the state of the country, ‎the leader strongly defended the action of the executive elections committees. There have ‎also been reports that Khamenei went even further and advised Khatami to distance ‎himself from the radicals and assured the former president that as long as the Islamic ‎Revolution remained in power the MPs of the sixth Majlis who had staged a protesting ‎sit-in and the radicals would not be permitted to participate in elections.‎

It appears that it was because of this position of ayatollah Khamenei that Iran’s chairman ‎of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs publicly announced that efforts must be made to “prevent the ‎entry into the Majlis oft those who had staged the sit-in, and said, “America has put its ‎hope in a group of defeatist individuals and those who have been deceived by the West. ‎These people have written letters calling for a compromise with Bush and have asked the ‎leader to compromise with Bush. And they held a sit-in protest in the Majlis. They have ‎infiltrated the university which has been the symbol of the battle against the US for 50 ‎years and have shouted slogans in favor of the US. The Iranian nation must know these ‎people.”‎

A member of the Etemad Melli (National Confidence) Party told Rooz, “In view of the ‎critical conditions the country is in, we did not think that the disqualifications of the ‎candidates would be as massive as they were. But they were forcing former president ‎Khatami to call the situation “a catastrophe” and “dangerous.”‎

At the same time, Karubi, who is the secretary of Etemad Melli, has brought other ‎individuals to intervene in the disqualifications process with an effort to reverse the ‎situation. Three leading reformist newspapers Etemad, Kargozaran and Etemad Melli ‎recently reported that Karubi met with Hassan Khomeini, a grandson of the founder of ‎the Islamic regime ayatollah Khomeini, in this regard and requested that the latter ‎intervene to alleviate the massive disqualification of the reformist candidates.‎

In a related news story, the managing editor of right-wing Keyhan newspaper Hossein ‎Shariatmadari editorialized - with a footnote that “he hoped the news was not correct” – ‎that “The reformist coalition has decided to withdraw In Tehran from participating in the ‎March Majlis elections should the Guardians Council (the highest body that vets the ‎election candidates) and the election supervisory boards confirm the recent ‎disqualification of their candidates, thus creating confusion and doubt in the elections ‎centers!” Shariatmadari warns that, “Should this news be accurate, it can indicate that a ‎group of extremists in the reformist camp are aiming to discredit the elections in Iran. ‎Particularly as some of these extremists have a record of being in unison with foreign ‎elements.”‎