Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 22 /Trend S.Isayev, T. Jafarov/
IRGC regrets it has supported Ahmadinejad in the past, Ayatollah Khamenei's representative to the IRGC, Ali Saidi-Shahroudi told Etimad Newspaper.
"I admit that I have supported Ahmadinejad in the past, but we did not have the precise knowledge of what is going on in his mind, or what he wants to do in the future," Saidi-Shahroudi noted.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have been a hero, yet he behave the way so that people who were on his side, switched to the side of opposition, turning against him, Ayatollah Khamenei's representative to the IRGC, Ali Saidi-Shahroudi said.
Saidi-Shahroudi said that IRGC has supported Ahmadinejad during his presidency in 2009, yet they did not know it would turn out to be like this.
At Iran's 10th presidential election, held on June 12, 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad run against three other candidates. IRNA news agency reported the next morning that Ahmadinejad won the election, thus becoming Iran's president for the second term.
After the elections, opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi issued a statement and called their supporters to protest the decision.
The reformists of the opposition during the 2009 presidential elections, said that there was vote fraud during Ahmadinejad's win, who won the elections with the help from IRGC and Basij Civil Forces.
Massive protests against the outcome of the election were met with fierce repressions, during which security forces shot and killed dozens of people and thousands were arrested.
Tensions became public in 2011 when Ahmadinejad fired the intelligence minister in April, only to have Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reinstate him.
During the crisis, Ahmadinejad did not show up for work or key cabinet meetings for 11 days.
Khamenei refused to woo the president to return to office. Indeed, he even initially signaled his willingness to let Ahmadinejad resign for refusing his dictates, despite the potential political costs to the regime.
The next presidential elections in Iran will take place on Khordad 24 (June 14), 2013. The voters will elect the seventh President, successor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.