TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian cleric said on Friday televised "confessions" of two detained American-Iranians proved a U.S.-backed plot to carry out a "velvet revolution" using intellectuals to topple Iran's clerical establishment.
Haleh Esfandiari, an academic at the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, and Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant with George Soros' Open Society Institute, have been detained separately since May for endangering Iran's security.
Iran's state television aired a program called "In the Name of Democracy" featuring interviews with Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh on Wednesday and Thursday. Washington has called the program illegitimate and coerced.
But Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Experts Assembly with the power to appoint or dismiss Iran's supreme leader, disagreed.
"Confessions of the executors of America's policies proved that America wanted to bring about a velvet revolution in Iran," Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University. His remarks were broadcast live on state radio.
Esfandiari, detained when visiting Iran from the United states, said on Thursday she had helped create a network "to lead to very fundamental changes in Iran's system."
The U.S.-based Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute said it was "deeply concerned over Iran's use of deliberately contrived television footage" of the pair.
A U.S. State Department spokesman told reporters in Washington: "This should be an embarrassment to the Iranian regime. Is it really possible to imagine that a government is so fragile and so under siege that individuals coming to visit elderly family members threaten its existence?"
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