TEHRAN Chairman of the Expediency Council, the highest arbitration body in the Islamic Republic, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, warned here on Wednesday of U.S. schemes to strip clerics from the scene and efforts of enemies to discredit the weekly Muslim Friday prayer gatherings.
"We should scrutinize enemy attacks on seminaries and Friday prayer gatherings so as to be able to take action against them," Rafsanjani told a gathering of the country's Friday prayer leaders.
He said that clerics should openly tread their path and exercise vigilance against the U.S. futile efforts to defame them.
Rafsanjani noted that enemies are undertaking round-the-clock efforts to damage national unity and solidarity, little knowing that clerics have won the confidence of the Muslim people of Iran.
"Today the enemies of the Islamic Revolution are attempting to make use of domestic politicians and prominent figures to deviate the youth from the right path through plots hatched in the name of Islam, religion and the clergy," he warned.
Rafsanjani further took occasion to laud his 8-year tenure as president before President Mohammad Khatami took office in 1997, calling the period as a "Reconstruction Era." He said that his government's reconstruction programs came heavily under fire from both inside and outside the country but, he clarified, those criticisms from within arose out of jealousy while those from outside the country were insidious plots.
Rafsanjani said the enemies are trying to portray the Islamic regime in Iran as "inefficient." "Any infrastructural move to make Iran powerful has always been foiled by Westerners," he said.
Elsewhere, Rafsanjani regretted the recent massacre by Israeli troops of 60 innocent Palestinians starting in front of Islam's third holiest site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and later spreading to the occupied territories.
The violence, the worst in four years, was triggered by a controversial visit Thursday by Israeli right-wing leader Ariel Sharon to the holy place in Bait-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem) which Palestinians say defiled Islam's third holiest site.
The move has been harshly censured by several bodies in Iran as well as international organizations all over the world.
Rafsanjani said that the bloody incident unveiled the bloodthirsty and vicious nature of the Zionists who pretend to seek peace.
He attacked the United States for not condemning the carnage.
He compared the U.S. indifference to the international reaction over the martyrdom of a 12-year old Palestinian boy which shocked the world.
Rafsanjani stressed that Islamic states should not allow the Zionist regime to have a grip on Bait-ul-Moqaddas.
(IRNA)