The leaders targeted included President Mohammad Khatemi, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former head of the judiciary Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi and several other political and religious personalities known for their liberal views.

The ministry claims that the assassination plot was made by a 34-member group, Mahdaviat, named after the 12th Imam of the Shiites, Hazrat Mahdi. The group's leader, Hasan Milani, termed a "deviant cleric," said he acted on the order of Hazrat Mahdi. Twenty members of the group were released after "re-education," according to the government.

Most of the personalities targeted for assassination are moderates, like President Khatemi, and this demonstrates the animosity of the group towards instituting a western style of reform and toward liberalization of Iranian politics and society. However, by the inclusion of conservative Ayatollah Yazdi on the hit list, the impression is that Mahdaviat was against the entire political regime in Iran.

If this is the case, why wasn't the most powerful Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei included in the list? Khamenei, besides being the supreme spiritual leader, controls the armed forces, the judiciary, the security and police forces and the national broadcast organisation. Yazdi's name is probably a red herring.

The intelligence ministry's disclosure of the assassination plot comes at a particularly significant juncture in Iranian politics. The conflict between the conservatives and liberals has reached a new high. Abdullah Nouri, a former interior minister and an important ally of President Khatemi, was jailed for five years by a special cleric court on Saturday. He was found guilty of insulting the late Ayatollah Khomeini and advocating links with the US, among other things.

Without giving the date of the discovery of the assassination plot and the arrest of group members, the Khamenei-controlled intelligence ministry seems to be warning the liberals of the dangerous mood of the conservative establishment.

There is a link between Mahdaviat and Basij, the powerful pro-Khamenei voluntary militia. The ministry disclosed that Mahdaviat group members on five different occasions stole weapons from Basij bases. The ministry also claimed that the plotters gathered information from state organizations to use it in its armed operations. The implication is that the plotters are well connected to power circles.

There is no mention of any investigation as to how the Mahdaviats were able to steal weapons repeatedly from the Basij. Normally this would be considered a security lapse on the part of Basij but there have been no reports that the government is treating it so. As a matter of fact, the disclosure came while the national Basij Week celebrations were going on, during which grand plans were announced to strengthen and equip their "resistance centers."

Basij is an armed civilian attachment of the Revolutionary Guards. It was created at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war on the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini to organize resistance against Iraqi forces. Numbering five million, they accept only Khamenei as their leader and are staunchly opposed to the liberals. Basij helped the police put down student unrest last July. Since then, security control in Tehran has been largely taken over by Basij forces.

The mention of Basij in the plot disclosure is probably meant to focus the attention of the liberals on the violent potential of the organization. The objective behind the move could be to warn the liberals to back down on their insistence on closer ties with the West, a key point of their campaign for the parliamentary elections next February.

Former Basij commander Gen. Gholamali Afshar called the liberals call for improving ties with the West a "blunder" and stressed that Basij forces should launch a "serious confrontation with the cultural assault."

The reason for the increasingly aggressive tone of the conservatives is the fact that there is a growing trend towards western style liberalization in the country. About 60% of the country's population grew up after the revolution of 1979 and thus do not have the same commitment to revolutionary ideals as the older generation did. Many desire a more secular society. But any move to lower religious influence in society and governance would automatically mean a diminishing of the power of the ruling clergy and its conservative allies.

The disclosure of the so-called assassination plot is a warning by the conservatives that they have no intention of relinquishing power. It also indicates troubled times ahead for Iran.