Iran: Your Easy-to-Use Ayatollah Scorecard

The Latest from Iran (22 July): “The Pendulum Swings” Towards Opposition

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Amidst much discussion, including on Enduring America, about the position of clerics in the post-election conflict, the excellent Tehran Bureau has compiled a list of the positions of ayatollahs who have made their views known publicly. Six Grand Ayatollahs have made statements supporting demonstrations, two have been neutral, and one opposed. Amongst Ayatollahs, eight (including Hashemi Rafsanjan) have been supportive of at least some opposition demands, two neutral, and seven opposed. (Note: Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastghaib, who wrote an open letter to Hashemi Rafsanjani today, can be added to the list of supporters of the protest movement):

Since protests erupted in Iran after its disputed Presidential election, a growing number of influential Shia clerics have made statements in favor of the protesters.

Grand Ayatollahs in Support of Protesters (in alphabetical order)

Though an exact list is hard to come by, experts agree that there are only a few dozen Grand Ayatollahs now living. Shia clerics earn the title of Grand Ayatollah through years of study, publishing papers and books on theological subjects, and gathering thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers. Literally translated, grand ayatollah, or marja taqlid, means “source of emulation.”

Grand Ayatollah Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardabili: “We do not have to pacify the protest by force,” said Ardabili in a meeting in late June with the Guardian Council, according to widely-quoted story from the Iranian Labour News Agency. “Let the people decide who is right and who is not.” Ardabili was a close and senior aid to Ayatollah Khomeini, and was the head of the Judicial system of Iran until Khomeini,’s death. He also established Mofid University.

Grand Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani issued a fatwa July 12 calling the elections illegitimate. On July 6 he said, “Every healthy mind casts doubt on the way the election was held… “More regrettable are post-election large-scale arrests, newspaper censorship and website filtering, and above all the martyrdom of our countrymen whom they describe as rioters,” according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. Bayat-Zanjani’s Farsi-language website has recently been filled with almost daily statements like these. Bayat-Zanjani is a former chancellor of Tehran University.

Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayegani called the election results announced by the government “a grand lie,” according to a June 30 story in Le Monde. Golpayegani, who was the first Secretary-General of the Guardian Council after the Revolution, met with some members of the Council and reportedly expressed regrets for what had happened.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri: A pro-Ahmadinijad website claimed July 13 that Montazeri suffers “severe memory disorders” and asks who has written statements attributed to the Grand Ayatollah. Montazeri responded by posting a photograph of a statement in his own handwriting on his website. On July 12, Montazeri wrote a fatwa calling the regime “un-Islamic.” He went on to say: “Injustice is the intentional opposition to the teachings of religion, the foundations of reasonableness, and rationality, and the national accords and consensus that have become the laws of the land. The ruler who opposes these is no longer qualified to rule.” He posted a July 8 statement to: “Protest the improper performance of official repression.” He has also called for three days of mourning for the death of Neda Agha-Soltan and other protesters. He has also said that, “No one in their right mind” could believe the election results,” in a statement issued June 16. Montazeri’s support for this June’s protesters is important but hardly surprising. Once the hand-picked successor to former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Montazeri lost favor after protesting the executions of political prisoners in the late 1980s and spent years under house arrest in the holy city of Qom after criticizing the current Supreme Leader.

Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei: “Everyone in the past days witnessed the attacks… that maimed, murdered, and caged any number of children,” said Saanei according to a translation of a July 3 statement on his website. Saanei had already expressed his “sympathy with the families of the victims of the recent disasters.” A confidante of Ayatollah Khomeini, Saanei retired as the head of the Guardian Council in 1988. More recently, he issued a fatwa in which he declared suicide bombing as haram and a ‘terrorist act.’

Grand Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri called the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “illegitimate” and “tyrannical,” according to a July 1 story from Radio Free Europe. He also said the regime’s actions are sending the Islamic Republic “to a museum.” Like Montazeri, Taheri is also a powerful cleric with a history of protest. One of Ayatollah Khomeini’s close friends and former Friday prayer leader of the city of Isfahan, he resigned his post in 2002 in protest over government corruption, the house-arrest of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, and the actions of militias he called club-wielding vigilantes.

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Iran: The Post-Election Challenge from Qom's Clerics

Iran: The “Ghaffari Tape” Criticising the Supreme Leader
The Latest from Iran (1 July): The Opposition Regroups

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In the furour over the Presidential election, the most intriguing political contest may have taken place, behind the street scenes, in Iran's religious centre, south of Tehran in the dusty city of Qom.

Within 72 hours of the 12 June vote, the clerics of Qom's seminaries had taken their place on the political stage. Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to mobilise them for a public challenge to President Ahmadinejad's victory. That initial attempt failed; indeed it is a key reasons why Rafsanjani then kept a careful silence before an equally careful, "balanced" return to public life with his speech last Sunday. There would be no mass movement of the religious leadership behind any campaign. Instead, factions already aligned to particular political movements would reassert their positions. The Association of Combatant Clerics would ally itself with the efforts of former President Mohammad Khatami and, thus, Mir Hossein Mousavi; Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, prominent on the Guardian Council, would bolster Ahmadinejad's position.

As the public demonstrations against the election swell, some Western media noted the possible significance of Qom, indeed over-dramatising a possible "split" in the Iranian system; conversely, as the public challenge has been contained, notions of a clerical challenge receded. That, too, is a mistake: the debate not only over the election but over the guardianship of Iran's Islamic Revolution continues.

While there still has been no significant show of support for the President (note Press TV's slightly strained attempt this morning, via an interview with a clerical member of Parliament, to say, "No one is talking about the election anymore), opposition has emerged in scattered but sometimes dramatic ways. The criticism of Ayatollah Montazeri, the one-time successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, was to be expected; the current regime, led by Montazeri's replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, still keeps the cleric under house arrest. He is not alone, however. Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani has claimed that the Iranian system is moving away from Khomeini's path and thoughts. Ayatollam Mousavi-Ardebili has criticised violence against the protestors and said recent events have weakened Iran's political and religious institutions. Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli has expressed displeasure. Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi and Ayatollah Sane’i have made gentler interventions, and Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi has written a careful but still challenging letter to the Supreme Leader. There are reports of "secret" meetings between Ayatollahs to consider developments and longer-term prospects.

The most dramatic challenge has come in a statement by Ayatollah Hadi Ghaffari on Ayatollah Khamenei. The leaked
audio on YouTube has created a stir with Ghaffari's criticism of the Supreme Leader's post-election conduct: Khamenei has ruined the honour of clerics with his handling of the political situation. (First reports said that Ghaffari had gone as far as to insult Khamenei as a "corpse-washer".) The ideals of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution are not being defended but destroyed.

None of this points to a Qom-led coup against President Ahmadinejad and, more importantly, Khamenei. On the other hand, these concerns are part of a much wider, more significant story of years past and years to come.

The Western caricature of Iran is that of a "theocracy" in which the "mullahs" hold power, working with secular politicians. That misconception misses the reality that a large section of Iran's clerical establishment are no friends of Ahmadinejad, whose policies and pronouncements have been seen as a challenge to the Iran envisaged by Ayatollah Khomeini. Indeed, it is not even accurate to speak on a unified clerical movement behind the Supreme Leader, whose selection in 1989 was a surprise to many --- given his relative junior status --- and has been seen as a triumph of politicians (ironically, given recent events, as part of manoeuvres by Hashemi Rafsanjani for authority) rather than a religious succession.

No surprise then that another video has supposedly resurfaced, this one of Ayatollah Montazeri considering the Iranian system of clerical authority, Velayat-e-Faqih, as he criticises Ayatollah Khameini. The text is clear: religion's true and proper place in the growth of the Islamic Republic has become "politicised" and thus corrupted.

And that is why the Presidential vote has a lasting significance, whatever happens in the near future with the demonstrations. Those ballot boxes are a symbol of the wider corruption that Montazeri claimed was undermining the Revolution. And, long after they have been put away, their symbolism --- whatever actually happened on 12 June --- remains.

As pne of our correspondents noted, after a lengthy glance at Qom last week, "This is not over."