IRAN’S PRESIDENT waved what purported to be an intelligence file about his challenger’s wife in the air on Wednesday night, accusing her of violating government rules in an explosive televised debate that laid bare the rifts within the country’s establishment.
Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the former prime minister who is the leading contender against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in next week’s presidential election, kept his cool and struck back forcefully, defending his wife as a dedicated scholar and artist, and accusing the incumbent of using the instruments of state to dig up dirt on his opponents.
“This is typical of your government,” he told Mr Ahmadinejad. “Instead of finding solutions, you send your deputies to make files on the people.”
The 90-minute encounter, watched by upwards of 40 million people, was the second in a series of seven one-on-one debates between the four presidential contenders.
The two candidates attacked each other unremittingly, touching on sensitive issues such as human rights, Iran’s involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict and its relations with the US, in a freewheeling format rarely seen on state television.
Mr Mousavi, struggling with his words at the start of the debate, hammered hard at Mr Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy, accusing him of alienating other countries.
He mocked what he described as president’s erratic behaviour during several crises and trips abroad, and repeatedly criticised him for questioning the existence of the Holocaust, which he said hurt Iran’s national interests and unified the world behind Israel.
“Relations between Europe and Israel had become a bit bad due to its crimes in Gaza,” he said. “Due to those remarks, (Europe) stood behind Israel.”
Mr Ahmadinejad, smiling and often sarcastic, fought back forcefully. With crisp delivery and in barbed words, he noted that during Mr Mousavi’s tenure as prime minister in the 1980s he too had called for Israel’s destruction, closed newspapers and jailed students.
The president took credit for expanding Iran’s nuclear programme and for standing up to the West.
“For 27 years the Americans were pursuing a policy of regime change against us,” he said.
“Now they are saying they are not. Whose foreign policy brought that about?”
Mr Ahmadinejad painted Mr Mousavi as part of a cabal that included Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential ayatollah and former president, which he said was dedicated to defeating him in order to secure vested interests.
He accused several key political figures and their families of corruption and hinted at evidence showing Mr Mousavi’s alleged wrongdoings.
Mr Mousavi rarely looked the president in the eye except when delivering a searing, final 12-minute segment that sounded like a prosecutor’s closing argument. He took Mr Ahmadinejad to task for harassing students, shutting newspapers and banning books, and accused him of cronyism for appointing an interior minister who had a fake university degree, the gambit that probably prompted Mr Ahmadinejad to raise the issue of Mr Mousavi’s wife.
Mr Mousavi likened Mr Ahmadinejad's populist giveaways to the behaviour of 19th century monarchs who used the public treasury to curry favour with the masses by tossing them a few coins. He argued several times that Mr Ahmadinejad had put the country in danger and did not adhere to the laws, citing example after example. "I don't think you're a dictator," he said, "but your attitude will lead to dictatorship." – ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)