The chief commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard escalated the regime’s accusations against leading opposition figures on Wednesday, claiming that Mohammad Khatami, the reformist leader, and a son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president, had been working to weaken or remove the country’s supreme leader.

The allegations by Mohammad-Ali Jafari, who answers directly to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, reflect the regime’s determination to crush the two former presidents, Mr Khatami and Mr Rafsanjani. The two backed reformist candidates in the June presidential elections and insisted that the vote had been rigged in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president.