"We are all members of a family. I hope with this sermon we can pass through this period of hardships that can be called a crisis," said former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, leading weekly prayers for the first time since the June 12 vote.No senior establishment figure has previously described the post-election turmoil as a crisis for the Islamic Republic.
Rafsanjani's remarks posed a clear challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has upheld the election result and accused foreign powers of fomenting the unrest.
Outside Tehran University, the longstanding venue for Friday prayers, police used tear gas and batons to try to disperse supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi. At least 15 people were arrested, a witness said.
Mousavi, a former prime minister, attended the ceremony in his first official public appearance since the vote, which he says was rigged. The authorities deny any fraud.
Rafsanjani, who backed Mousavi's election campaign, said many Iranians had doubts about official results that showed hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had won by a wide margin. The pragmatic cleric, who heads the Council of Experts -- a powerful body that can in theory dismiss the supreme leader -- attacked the way authorities had handled the poll and its aftermath.
"When people are not in the scene and their votes are not there, that government is not Islamic," he said, referring to opposition charges of vote-rigging. "Today is a bitter day."
Rafsanjani said it was vital to restore voters' faith in the system. "That trust cannot be brought back in a day or a night ... We all have been harmed. Today more than ever we need unity."
He criticised the Guardian Council, a clerical body which vets candidates and considers election complaints, for failing to do its job even though it was given five extra days to make its assessment. The council has denied any irregularities.
Harsh language
Using harsh language against the use of security forces to quell protests, Rafsanjani, who was close to Iran's late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said:
"I speak as a person who has been with the revolution on a daily basis ... We knew what Imam Khomeini wanted. He didn't want the use of terror or arms, even in fights (for the revolution)."
The election stirred the most striking display of internal dissent in the oil-producing country since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed deepening divisions in its establishment.
Benzer Haberler 
World
