The emergence of Mohammad-Ali Jafari, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, as the new spokesman for the right-wing establishment push against the reformists may have brought the Guards into the open as the prime movers in attempts to deliver the opposition a killer blow.
This week, under the cover of Iran’s skewed and subservient semi-official media, top guardsman Jafari issued a forceful attack on senior reformists, former President Mohammad Khatami and Secretary General of the Assembly of Combatant Clerics, Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi-Khoeniha.
Referring to evidence no more substantial than the confession extracted from high-profile detainee Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, Jafari claimed that the real target of the opposition had, from the beginning, been the Office of the Supreme Leader.
