Bani-Sadr accuses Khamenei of weakening Iranian presidency

PanARMENIAN.Net - Exiled former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr accused Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday, June 11 of using this week's presidential election to weaken the office and cement his own power, Reuters reported.

Bani-Sadr, a sworn opponent of Tehran's clerical rulers ever since being driven from office and fleeing in 1981, said that the six remaining candidates in Friday's poll were separated by only shades of difference on policy.

"Any one of these men picked by Khamenei will execute his orders," the 80-year-old told Reuters in an interview in his house near Paris, where he has been exiled since 1981. "The Republic is erasing itself in the face of the Leader."

Most key Iranian policies that concern the world, such as an uranium enrichment program that has prompted international economic sanctions, and Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels, are decided by Khamenei.

Although the Iranian president generally runs domestic affairs, especially the economy of the oil producer, and is Iran's highest-ranking public face, outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been increasingly at loggerheads with Khamenei in his second term, and begun to seem like a marginal figure.

Bani-Sadr said all his potential successors had shown in pre-election debates that they were out of touch with the economic difficulties of ordinary Iranians.

"The presidency is finished. Even under (ex-president) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Republic resisted. He had a say, but that's over. They dare not say that we have reached an impasse," said Bani-Sadr, a veteran of the protest movement of the 1970s that overthrew Iran's shah.

Bani-Sadr said the Iranian people were fully aware that the election meant very little, but that Western sanctions and the veiled threat of war to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons had helped to strengthen Khamenei's hand.

"His strategy is to see how much fear can paralyze the people," Bani-Sadr said. "These elections are telling them that there is the choice of the ballot box or hell," he said, pointing to the conflicts in Afghanistan to the east, Iraq to the west, and in Syria.