Iran's supreme leader has appointed the radical son of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a member of a council entrusted with ridding the Islamic republic of Western influences.
The official Iranian news agency IRNA said Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khomeini was named a member of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution Friday.IRNA quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took over as supreme leader after Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989, as describing the council as one of the most useful revolutionary in-sti-tu-tions.
Khamenei called on the council headed by President Akbar Hash-emi Rafsanjani Thursday to campaign against video films to protect Iranian youth from Western cultural influence.
Ahmad Khomeini, who has long been associated with the more radical interpretations of his father's Islamic policies, was until recently seen as among militants who have lost the power struggle in Iran to Rafsanjani's more pragmatic sup-port-ers.
His appointment will be widely seen as fresh evidence of a new radical twist in Iran. Diplomats in the region have noticed a sharp toughening of Iran's anti-Western rhetoric and policies since last month's election of Democrat Bill Clinton as the next president of the United States.
IRNA said Khamenei pointed to Ahmad Khomeini's "eagerness to indulge in fundamental efforts in cultural fields" and said he expected members of the council to "endear the revolution's culture and cultural developments and make all their decisions on that basis."
In Thursday's speech to the council, Khamenei also voiced concern about an anti-Islamic trend in Iran's universities, including removal of Islamic-oriented social science professors and a proliferation of Western-type subjects.
The warnings also appear to underline worries about the popularity of Western cultural values among both the masses and the elite nearly 14 years after the victory of Iran's Islamic revolution.