{"id":1033,"date":"2017-05-12T15:38:09","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T15:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2017-05-12T15:38:09","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T15:38:09","slug":"iran-top-leader-troublemakers-in-election-will-be-slapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1033","title":{"rendered":"Iran top leader: Troublemakers in election will be ‘slapped’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ali Khamenei<\/p><\/div>\n

Abc News – By\u00a0NASSER KARIMI AND JON GAMBRELL, ASSOCIATED PRESS –\u00a0TEHRAN, Iran —,\u00a0<\/em>Iran’s supreme leader warned Wednesday that anyone trying to foment unrest around the upcoming\u00a0presidential election<\/a>\u00a0“will definitely be slapped in the face” \u2014 a sign authorities want to avoid a repetition of the violence that followed the country’s disputed 2009 poll.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments came as the country’s intelligence minister said his agents already disrupted one plot to cause disruptions. Meanwhile, windows at a campaign office of President\u00a0Hassan Rouhani<\/a>\u00a0were broken by vandals.<\/p>\n

So far, however, there has been no sign of major problems ahead of the May 19 election.<\/p>\n

Khamenei spoke during a graduation ceremony in Tehran for cadets in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a hard-line paramilitary force. He warned that enemies of Iran seek “to create tension and sedition to disrupt order and security.”<\/p>\n

“Those who ignore the country’s security will definitely be slapped in the face,” Khamenei said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.<\/p>\n

His comments mirror those of others in the run-up to the election, in which Rouhani faces five opponents. In 2009, former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election led to months of unrest and dozens of deaths. Authorities blocked Ahmadinejad from running in next week’s election.<\/p>\n

Khamenei also mentioned a “wealthy American Zionist merchant” trying to interfere in Iran’s 2009 election in his comments, likely referring to liberal billionaire George Soros. In 2008, hard-liners in Iran became increasingly paranoid about Soros and his work promoting democracy in a number of countries, with the Intelligence Ministry going as far as including Soros in a computer-animated public service announcement about its new hotline to report suspicion activity.<\/p>\n

Soros’ Open Society Foundations, based in New York, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

In an interview aired Tuesday night, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said his agents broke up a plot that would involve gangs of paid youths fighting each other. Alavi also said the ministry detained suspected members of an Iranian opposition exile group, without elaborating.<\/p>\n

Candidates must manage their campaigns “in a way that protects national solidarity and integrity while not damaging ethics and values of the society,” Alavi said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, local news outlets in Tehran reported that windows had been smashed at one of the many campaign offices of Rouhani. They said another office previously had been targeted as well.<\/p>\n

Rouhani, whose moderate administration struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, is campaigning for another four-year term as Iran’s top elected official. He faces five opponents, chief among them hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, a close ally of Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Raisi has criticized Rouhani, but said he wouldn’t pull out of the nuclear deal.<\/p>\n

“There is no evidence that the U.S. and the Western countries are abiding by their commitments,” Raisi told an Iranian-backed news agency in Lebanon in a report released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Gambrell reported from Dubai,\u00a0United Arab Emirates<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abc News – By\u00a0NASSER KARIMI AND JON GAMBRELL, ASSOCIATED PRESS –\u00a0TEHRAN, Iran —,\u00a0Iran’s supreme leader warned Wednesday that anyone trying to foment unrest around the upcoming\u00a0presidential election\u00a0“will definitely be slapped<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}