2 Iranian Leaders Challenge Hard-Liners

In a rare challenge, Iran’s president and parliament speaker Saturday jointly accused hard-line clerics of trying to sway upcoming elections by banning liberals from running for two-thirds of the seats in parliament.

A statement by President Mohammad Khatami and Speaker Mehdi Karrubi denounced the ban by the conservative Guardian Council as being against “Islamic democracy.”

It was a remarkable act of solidarity by Iran’s highest-ranking reformist figures, openly confronting the members of the unelected Guardian Council, who seek to cling to power despite their great unpopularity.

The battle over who can run in the Feb. 20 elections has turned into Iran’s worst political crisis in years, with hard-liners trying to seize control of the 290-seat Majlis, now dominated by liberals who are allied with the president.

“An election in which there will be no possibility of competition for 190 seats ... is [designed] so that it gives a greater chance to a certain thinking,” the joint statement said.

The council had disqualified one-third of 8,200 would-be candidates.

The president and speaker warned that the disqualifications are “against the dignity of the noble Iranian nation.”

The head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, defended the disqualifications Friday. But it appeared that the council was softening its stance Saturday: Mohammed Jahromi, another Guardian Council member, said about 400 banned candidates had been reinstated, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.