Iran's conservative presidential hopeful Mohsen Rezai on Sunday slammed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accusing him of pushing the Islamic republic to the edge of a "precipice." "Ahmadinejad's path leads to a precipice," Rezai told a news conference. "I have been critical of him and still am."
Rezai, who headed Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps for 16 years up until 1997, is the first conservative to challenge Ahmadinejad in the June 12 poll. "I see Ahmadinejad's language as adventurous," he said about the president's nuclear policy.
"I believe the West and the United States need us today. We have to exploit their need to serve our national interests," he said, according to AFP. "I neither support passivity nor adventurism."
Rezai also attacked Ahmadinejad for "throwing money around the country" for propaganda ahead of the election.
Rezai conveyed his biggest challenge would be "poverty, high prices and unemployment".
Rezai also described a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israel as a "failed and unfeasible initiative", but insisted the Holocaust was "a historic question which should be left out of the political language." "Denying or proving it has nothing do with it," he said.
