The seventh conference by Iran’s Assembly of Experts on Leadership – a body that is constitutionally charged with supervising the conference opens its session tomorrow while the faction supporting the administration in the Majlis, along with several prominent right-wing hardline figures affiliated with the military-security apparatus has intensified its attacks on Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Assembly’s chairman while also stepping up its defense and praise of ayatollah Khomeini’s positions.

In this connection, Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, a radical cleric who staunchly supports Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and who has been silent since the Ashoura Day protests, suddenly appeared in a meeting attended by his “students,” according to websites close to the administration to praise ayatollah Khamenei’s leadership.

In his remarks, without naming Mousavi and Karoubi, Mesbah-Yazdi blasted “leaders of the opposition” and referred to them as “conspirators.”