In another expression of concern over forthcoming Presidential elections, the Tehran Friday Prayer leader has said that Iran must be prepared for the cultural attack of the “enemy”.

The regime is anxious that there is no repetition of the mass protests after the disputed 2009 Presidential election, “won” by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Scores of people are still detained, including the leaders of the opposition Green Movement — Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both candidates in the election, and Mousavi’s wife, activist and academic Zahra Rahnavard.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Leader — who intervened in 2009 to denounce the protests and sanction a regime crackdown — repeated his warning, “In elections, laws must be followed exactly; whatever the election results, they are effectively valid and legitimate.”

Yesterday the Tehran Friday Prayer leader, Ahmad Khatami, continued Khamanei’s appeal, “Today, we are in dire need of maintaining the country’s political readiness to protect the Islamic government and martyrs’ blood.”

Khatami also echoed the Supreme Leader’s call for a “Resistance Economy”, implicitly challenging the record and appraoch of the Rouhani Government:

They [the US] have imposed the most unprecedented sanctions in the past 100 years against Iran and this shows that we should be well prepared in dealing with economic wars ahead.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution as the open eyes of the Iranian nation, many years ago diagnosed the problem and called for devising a policy based on “Resistance Economy” to properly deal with the issue.

Khatami also pointed to military exercises to declare the Islamic Republic is being prepared to deal with any enemy attack. But he repeated that “dealing with cultural inroads will be much tougher than dealing with military confrontation”.

TOP PHOTO: Tehran Friday Prayer leader Ahmad Khatami