An Iranian deputy intelligence minister has threatened the country’s reformists with mass arrest, just days before a scheduled two-day reformist convention, the Green Voice of Freedom has learned.

According to GVF sources, an intelligence ministry deputy, who used the alias “Majidi,” recently summoned Najafgholi Habibi, the chairman of Coordinating Council of the Reformist Front, and threatened to arrest participants in the upcoming reformist congress if organisers refuse to comply with the conditions set forth by the ministry.

The convention is scheduled to be held on the 16th and 17th of January. Its prime focus will be the reformist strategy vis-à-vis the June 2013 presidential election.

The security official reportedly told Habibi that the reformist factions must “draw a line” between themselves and the “seditionists,” and reject any association with the leaders of the opposition Green Movement. “You mustn’t make any mention of Mousavi, Khatami and Karroubi.”

“Sedition” is a term commonly used by regime officials and media outlets to refer to the 2009 unrest that following the rigged elections in June that year. Opposition leaders Mousavi, Karroubi and Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard were placed under house arrest in February 2011 after calling for protests in solidarity with the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

Habibi was also warned about the appearance of representatives from the Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organisation and Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), the country’s largest reformist parties, at the congress. Habibi himself is a member of IIPF. The two groups were outlawed in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential race.

In a recent meeting with convention organisers, former President Mohammad Khatami said that the status quo “cannot ensure that proper elections will be held.”

“At a time when the reformists’ right to hold their congress and gatherings is still in question, how can one hope to see a significant participation on the part of the various political factions?” Khatami asked. He said that if the authorities allowed for such a convention to take place, it would be seen as a “sign, albeit a small one,” that the country’s wide-ranging political groupings will be tolerated in the 2013 elections.

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, recently described the country’s situation as “critical” and called for “competitive” and free elections based on the rule of law.

“In this critical period, when the country is facing threats and sanctions from the enemies of the revolution, contention and disputes are by no means the solution. We hope that everyone, … from ordinary people to the highest levels [of leadership], embraces dialogue, cooperation and understanding in order to pave the way for competitive elections in accordance with the law.”

In November 2012, senior reformist cleric Ayatollah Mousavi Khoeiniha, questioned the freeness of the upcoming vote given the present circumstances. “They say that if you want to participate in the elections, you have to declare your detestation of ‘sedition,'” said the ayatollah. “What does ‘detestation’ mean? Does it mean that we have to dissociate ourselves from Mr. Mousavi and … Karroubi?”

Speaking to a group of students, Khoeiniha went on to add: “We proposed Mr. Mousavi as a presidential candidate ourselves, and he claims that his votes were expropriated. That issue has not been settled yet because they [authorities] have sat one of the claimants on the throne and imprisoned the other in his own home. Now we are supposed to dissociate ourselves from him just to participate in the election? So that they can replay the same scenario again? What kind of political move is that?”

In a recent statement published by Norooz news, prominent reformist figure Mostafa Tajzadeh, who is currently serving a six-year jail term in solitary confinement in Evin Prison, voiced similar sentiments about the forthcoming elections.

The 56-year-old believes that the “activities” of ultra-conservative cleric Mesbah Yazdi, Guardian Council chairman Ahmad Jannati and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, could only mean that “another electoral coup d’état” is looming, one similar to the monumental fraud that overshadowed the previous presidential race.

Source: GVF