Detentions of senior Reformists Front figures follow criticism of the authorities’ handling of recent protests
The head of Iran’s Reformists Front, the organisation that was instrumental in securing the election of the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in a move that will probably deepen the tensions over the handling of the recent street protests.
Azar Mansouri, the secretary general of the Islamic Iran People party, had expressed deep sorrow at protesters’ deaths, and said nothing could justify such a catastrophe. She had not in public called for the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to resign.
In what looked like a decisive roundup of the key reformist figures outside government, Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, the head of the front’s political committee, and Mohsen Aminzadeh, a deputy foreign minister under the former president Mohammad Khatami, were also arrested.
At least two other prominent figures in the Reformists Front, an umbrella group of as many as 27 reformist factions, have been ordered to appear at police stations this week. The moves seem designed to prevent the spread of criticism of the way the security services handled the protests.
