Sunday, July 05, 2009

Qom Clerics Speak Out

Qom clerics defy Khamenei
"Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”"
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"The statement was issued after a meeting Mr. Moussavi had with the committee 10 days ago and a decision by the Guardian Council to certify the election and declare that all matters concerning the vote were closed.

But the defiance has not ended.

With heavy security on the streets, there is a forced calm. But each day, slowly, another link falls from the chain of government control. Last week, in what appeared a coordinated thrust, Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Khatami all called the new government illegitimate. On Saturday, Mr. Milani of Stanford said, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani met with families of those who had been arrested, another sign that he was working behind the scenes to keep the issue alive."

Top Iran Religious Body Criticizes Election Results
"Late Saturday, Mousavi's Ghalamnews website posted a 25-page report, exposing a laundry list of "fraud and irregularities," during the election, including intervention by the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

It also charged the Interior Ministry with printing 14-million ballots more than the number of registered voters. The Guardian council spokesman admitted, at one point, that the number of votes counted in one region exceeded the number of voters by three million.
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"Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani Sadr, who was overthrown in 1981 and lives in exile in Paris, says that he thinks Rafsanjani and the other clerics are putting up a timid resistance to the government, but the Iranian people have been bolder:

He says that Hashemi Rafsanjani is not able to stand up to Ayatollah Khamenei directly, but is trying to oppose him in a sly and surreptitious manner, using other people as covers. The other religious leaders who came out against the government, he says, are also being cautious, questioning the legitimacy of President Ahmedinejad and the repression he is waging, and electoral fraud. The people, he argues, have gone beyond that point, crying "down with the dictator ... down with Khamenei" and questioning the legitimacy of the entire regime."
I believe this is the beginning of the end. Sooner or later, even the reformist clerics will be swept from power and forced to return to the mosque.

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