TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's supreme leader has ordered a review of the disqualifications of thousands of candidates from legislative elections, a government spokesman said Wednesday, in a bid to defuse a standoff with reformers threatening a boycott.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's move came a day after he sided with hard-liners and rejected a request by President Mohammad Khatami for the Feb. 20 elections to be postponed.

The Khatami's reformist government has said it would not stage voting unless the disqualifications are overturned. However, the powerful, hard-line Guardian Council has refused to withdraw its disqualification of about 30 percent of the 8,200 people who applied to run in the polls.

Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said Khamenei agreed to a review of the disqualifications — the second in less than a month — in a meeting with Khatami on Tuesday.

"Considering the positive view taken by the supreme leader for a review of the disqualifications, we hope to achieve a final result as soon as possible that would allow us to hold an election with a huge turnout," Ramezanzadeh told reporters.

His comment was the first in days that suggested the elections might go ahead as planned. On Tuesday, scores of reformist lawmakers called for the elections to be postponed.

Also, Iran's provincial governors said in a statement posted on the Interior Ministry's Web site that they would not hold the elections — suggesting that hard-liners would have to use the military to run the polls.

The Guardian Council, which is appointed by Khamenei, has disqualified more than 2,400 people from the polls. Reformers have protested the disqualifications as an attempt to fix the elections in favor of conservatives. Hard-liners have denied any political motives, arguing that the disqualified lacked the criteria to stand. But the disqualified include 80 incumbent lawmakers.

Ramezanzadeh said the review would be conducted by the Intelligence Ministry.

A Cabinet minister indicated that most of the candidates, but not all, were likely to be restored to the ballot by the review.

"A large number are expected to be reinstated," said Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, a pro-reform minister told reporters Wednesday.

While Ramezanzadeh and Zanganeh sounded upbeat about the review's prospects, reformists have been disappointed before. Early last month, Khamenei urged the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualifications. It did so, but its reinstatements were regarded as politically insignificant.

What makes the new review different is that it is to be conducted by a ministry that is nominally under the control of reformists.

When the list of approved candidates was first announced in early January, it emerged that the Guardian Council had disqualified about 3,600 people of the 8,200 who filed papers to stand.

After protests, and Khamenei's requested reconsideration, the council reinstated 1,160 low-profile names, but the major reformists — including the leaders of the Islamic Iran Participation Front — remained barred. Reformists rejected the reinstatements as cosmetic.

The meeting between Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, and Khatami was seen as a last chance to ease Iran's worst political crisis in years. It was attended by parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi, a reformist who had urged Khamenei to intervene, and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the hard-line head of the judiciary.

The leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest reformist party, Mohammad Reza Khatami, said Monday his group would boycott the polls. The day before, more than 120 lawmakers tendered their resignations, saying there was no point in holding elections whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Without the Front, hard-line candidates likely would easily retake control of parliament with an expected low turnout. Reformists had won the parliament in 2000 for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and used it as a platform to press for social and political reforms.