Mehdi Karoubi, the former speaker of the parliament and a presidential candidate in 2009 who has been living under house arrest for the past 9 years, published a letter in which he criticizes the claims made by Ahmad Jannati, the secretary of the Guardian Council, regarding “the guardian council’s objectivity” and says Jannati is “not telling the truth in his old age.”

According to Karoubi, the free election has become the regime’s Achilles heel, to a point that anyone who suggests it, is immediately considered as a threat to the regime.

According to Saham News, in his letter that he released on Friday, July 19, Karoubi told Jannati that “in the age of information and social media”, Jannati is “clumsily trying to present the day as night and night as day.”

The letter was released after the judiciary sentenced Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami, to two years in prison for an interview in which he claimed widespread fraud had occurred in 2009 elections.

Recently, in an interview with Kayhan Newspaper, Jannati claimed that the Guardian Council is an “objective” institution and does not care about the political affiliation of candidates.

The Guardian council consists of 6 clerics and 6 legal experts all directly or indirectly appointed by the supreme leader, and all candidates for elections must be approved by the Guardian Council before they can run for any office. The Guardian Council also oversees the bills approved by the parliament and decides whether those laws are in accordance with the law and the Islamic principles or not.

Karoubi also mentions the Green Movement which began as a response to the election fraud in 2009, and states: “Instead of listening to their (people’s) civil protests, you spilled their blood to suppress their peaceful movement, which is undoubtedly a shameful stain in the history of this regime.”