in the upcoming Majlis elections only if they first admit they “made a mistake” about the last presidential election.
Khamenehi did not make the intervention in a public setting, but rather in a meeting with members of the Assembly of Experts, the body of 86 clerics that elects the Supreme Leader.
In an interview with Khabar-on-line, Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi-Kani, the chairman of the Assembly, said he had asked Khamenehi specifically about the reformists and their right to run in the March elections. He quoted Khamenehi as responding: “If they came and admitted they were in error [about the 2009 presidential elections], then it is not a problem. They can come and say: we made a mistake and now we understand and do not want to repeat those errors.”
The groups formed around former presidential candidates Mir-Hossain Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi have announced already that they will boycott the elections. But others—mainly the 40-odd reformists elected to the current Majlis—want to run in the upcoming election.
Several months ago, the regime outlawed the two main reformist parties, the Islamic Iran Partnership Party, which was founded in 1997 to support President Khatami, and the Mujahideen of the Islamic Revolution, which dates back to the 1980s.
But that ban did not apply to individuals running, just to the party organization. Khamenehi’s latest pronouncement was addressed to individuals, if Mah-davi-Kani quoted him correctly.
Candidates seeking to run may start filing their registration papers as of December 24. But many may not know what they are filing for. The Ahmadi-nejad Administration submitted a bill to the Majlis a few months ago to boost the number of Majlis deputies from 290 to 310. But the Majlis has not acted on the bill yet.