Iran's powerful conservative Guardians Council pledged on Sunday it would review a controversial blacklist of candidates hoping to contest next month's parliament elections, saying it would respect an order from the Islamic republic's supreme leader to be less stringent.
The comments, from the spokesman of the political watchdog, come amid an ongoing crisis that has prompted a government resignation threat and the possibility that preparations for the key February 20 vote could be thrown into disarray.
"Where the aptitude of certain candidates, notably those incumbent MPs, had been approved in the past, it means that these people can still be candidates unless there is proof to the contrary," Ebrahim Azizi told a news conference.
His comments mirrored an order from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was forced to intervene amid uproar that some 83 sitting MPs were among the thousands on the Guardians Council blacklist.
Most of those rejected were also reformers, whose control over the parliament, or Majlis, for the past four years has caused immense frustration among hard-liners.
The Council, which screens all laws and candidates for public office and also has to validate the election result, barred nearly half of the 8,000 who registered to stand on political and theological grounds.
"We are united by the directives given by the Supreme Guide (Ayatollah Khamenei), which are always a source for solutions," the spokesman said.
"If the Guardians Council reaches the conclusion that the candidates were rejected by the Surveillance Commissions without solid proof, it will approve them," Azizi said.
The Surveillance Commissions are a network of some 200,000 monitors employed by the Guardians Council to run background checks on would-be MPs.
But Azizi did assert that the Guardians Council would not automatically approve those who had failed to adequately prove their aptitude for a job in the Majlis.
"Maybe somebody is a Muslim, but does not respect Islam or the constitution of the Islamic republic in practice. In that case, we cannot approve them," he said.
According to figures from the reformist-run interior ministry, the candidacies of some 1,220 were rejected for non-respect of Islam, and 1,370 were blacklisted for not having proved they should be approved.
Azizi said the Guardians Council began examining appeals on Saturday and would give its response in 20 days.
For his part, reformist Majlis speaker Mehdi Karoubi said he was hoping the Guardians Council would act "with more speed".
Reformists are complaining that if a final list is only published a week or so before the elections, they will have little time to prepare a campaign.
Scores of MPs have been occupying parliament on an on-off basis for the past week. On Saturday they began fasting.