TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's opposition leader said Saturday that a dictatorial "cult" was ruling Iran in the name of Islam -- his strongest attack to date on the country's clerical leadership.
Mir Hossein Mousavi also challenged the government to let his supporters take to the streets freely, saying that would allow it to gauge the opposition's true strength. On Thursday, Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, charged that the country's opposition had lost its credibility and its right to participate in politics by not accepting the results of June presidential elections.
Khamenei's comments suggest that Iran's opposition will be barred from running in any future elections.
"This is the rule of a cult that has hijacked the concept of Iranianism and nationalism," Mousavi said in an interview published on his Web site, kaleme.com. "Our people clearly understand the difference between divine piety and thirst for power in a religious style ... our people can't tolerate that (dictatorial) behaviors are promoted in the name of religion."
He said that the opposition aims to effect reform by raising
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Iran's opposition alleges President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the June vote through fraud and that Mousavi was the rightful winner. A massive wave of protests provoked a bloody government crackdown, during which more than 80 demonstrators were killed and hundreds of rights activists, journalists and pro-reform politicians were arrested.
The government, which puts the number of confirmed deaths at 30, has accused opposition leaders of being "stooges of the West" and of seeking to topple the ruling system through street protests.
