DUBAI, Jan 8: Iran’s most powerful leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned the Iranian public on Tuesday against helping Tehran’s enemies by criticising the forthcoming presidential election.

Iranians go to the polls in June to elect a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iran’s leadership is keen to avoid a repeat of the widespread protests that followed the last presidential vote in 2009. Khamenei’s comments appear to be a response to a debate inside Iran about whether reformist candidates — those with a more moderate stance on issues such as social policy and greater political freedoms — should be allowed to run.

“Everyone, even those who make general recommendations about the election through (expressing) concerns, should take care not to serve the purpose of the enemy,” Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website. Analysts say reformist candidates may be allowed to run for election if they distance themselves from the two 2009 presidential candidates, Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who have been under house arrest for nearly two years.

The two opposition leaders alleged Ahmadinejad’s landslide re-election was rigged and they became figureheads for the “green movement” anti-government demonstrations across Iran, the biggest opposition protests since the 1979 revolution.—Reuters