The hardliners have already attacked him in public with sticks.
The former Iranian president was attacked by an angry mob of hardliners with sticks at a public ceremony last week after he announced his candidacy. Khatami’s bodyguards had to “take him to a building to protect him because of the presence of a large crowd”.
Iranian regime hardliners and Ahmadinejad supporters threatened to assassinate the “moderate” presidential candidate Khatami before the election this year.
Rooz Online reported:
Political circles in Tehran reacted harshly to the publication of a front-page editorial in hardliner Kayhan daily, which warned that Khatami may experience the same fate as Benazir Bhutto.
Yesterday, responding to Kayhan’s editorial, which accused Khatami of participating in the election to derail the process and warned about his assassination, Khatami said, “These accusations have always backfired.”
Khatami recalled, “All widely circulated, important and influential outlets are controlled by a certain political current which sees as its duty to attack competitors.” Noting that these outlets and political currents are controlled by top layers of government, Khatami said, “If there is thinking in top layer of government, these attacks are controllable.”
Repeating Threat Against Khatami
Following the publication of its front-page editorial last Thursday, on Saturday, February 13, in another editorial, Hossein Shariatmadari, the Supreme Leader’s representative at the newspaper, repeated the threat of physical violence against Khatami.