More rifts in Iran’s theocracy
Despite recent pronouncements by the Iranian Supreme Leader it would appear that the situation in Iran remains volatile.
The Times reports that a group of senior clerics in Qom the clerical centre of Iran is openly pronouncing the election invalid.
The Association of Researchers and Teachers is based in Qom, the clerical nerve centre of Iran, and includes many leading ayatollahs with impeccable revolutionary credentials and big personal followings.
The association did not support a candidate in the election, but has now lined up firmly behind Mr Mousavi. In a rebuke to the regime it declared on its website: “Candidates’ complaints and strong evidence of vote-rigging were ignored . . . Peaceful protests by Iranians were violently oppressed . . . Dozens of Iranians were killed and hundreds were illegally arrested . . . The outcome is invalid.”
It would appear that cracks in the Islamic theocracy run deep. It may not be democracy as many in the West understand it, but deep rifts appear to exist in the Iranian political and clerical establishment.
If as The Times suggests that the regime of Ali Khamenei is dependent on military not clerical support, then more unrest appears likely.
Another view – http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/06/regime-change-iran-movement-se/ -down a crack in the Iranian Islamic theocracy, originating from an article in Saudi Arabia’s al-Arabiya, confirms substantive disagreements between factions in the Iranian clerical establishment with a series of secret meetings convened in the holy city of Qom and, intriguingly, with the inclusion of Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq