Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and NAZILA FATHI
Published: July 4, 2009
CAIRO — The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.
“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”
The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released do ents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.
The do ents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters.
Since the election, the bulk of the clerical establishment in the holy city of Qum, an important religious and political center of power, has remained largely silent, leaving many to wonder when, or if, the nation’s most senior religious leaders would jump into the controversy that has posed the most significant challenge to the country’s leadership since the Islamic Revolution.
With its statement Saturday, the association of clerics — formed under the leadership of the revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — came down squarely on the side of the reform movement.
The association includes reformists, but Iranian political analysts describe it as independent, and it did not support any candidate in the recent election.
The group had earlier asked for the election to be nullified because so many Iranians objected to the results, but it never directly challenged the legitimacy of the government and, by extension, the supreme leader.
The earlier statement also came before the election was certified by the country’s religious leaders, who have since said that opposition to the results must cease.
The clerics’ decision to speak up again is not itself a turning point and could fizzle under pressure from the state, which has continued to threaten its critics. Some seminaries in Qum rely on the government for funds, and Ayatollah Khamenei and the man he has declared the winner of the election, in bent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have powerful backers there.
They also retain the support of the powerful security forces and the elite Revolutionary Guards. In addition, the country’s highest-ranking clerics have yet to speak out individually against the election results.
But the association’s latest statement does help Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Khatami and a former speaker of Parliament, Mehdi Karroubi, who have been the most vocal in calling the election illegitimate and who, in their attempts to force change, have been hindered by the jailing of influential backers.
“The significance is that even within the clergy, there are many who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the election results as announced by the supreme leader,” said an Iranian political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
While the government could continue vilifying the three opposition leaders, analysts say it was highly unlikely that the leadership would use the same tactic against the clerical establishment in Qum.
The backing also came at a sensitive time for Mr. Moussavi, because the accusations that he is a foreign agent ran in a newspaper, Kayhan, that has often been used to build cases against critics of the government.
The editorial was written by Hossein Shariatmadari, who was picked by the supreme leader to run the newspaper.
The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.
It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.
“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.
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.”
The statement was posted on the association’s Web site late Saturday and carried on many other sites, including the Persian BBC, but it was impossible to reach senior clerics in the group to independently confirm its veracity.
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.
“I don’t ever remember in the 20 years of Khamenei’s rule where he was clearly and categorically on one side and so many clergy were on the other side,” Mr. Milani said. “This might embolden other clergy to come forward.”
The committee of clergy was formed in the 1960s. Mr. Milani said that for years, Ayatollah Khamenei also belonged to the group, and that it had developed some political clout by backing successful candidates for national office.
Many of the accusations of fraud posted on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site Saturday had been published before, but the report did give some more specific charges.
For instance, although the government had announced that two of the losing presidential contenders had received relatively few votes in their hometowns, the do ents stated that some ballot boxes in those towns contained no votes for the two men.
I read this article in today's NYT. I think it is a very hopeful sign for change in Iran. This is the most important development there in more than a generation. I don't think that Moussavi is anyone's savior, but I think the ability and willingness of a significant and imprtant clerical group in Iran to openly challenge the Supreme Leader is massive in its implications for other protests and disagreements gaining legitimacy. Wow.
They will flip-flop when it becomes apparent their leadership and lives are in danger.
That makes their present disposition no less significant IMO. The people will remember who stood up for them, and if Khamenei and the armed forces crack down on well-respected religious authorities, it will be much the worse for them in the long run.
At a minimum, the door has been opened for characterizing the Guardian Council and Ahmadinejad's power base as un-Islamic. In a thoroughly Islamized society like Iran, this is a significant development.
Nico Pitney points out a significant error in the NYT story.
Iran Uprising Blogging (Sunday July 5)
11:07 PM ET -- Did the New York Times err in report on clerical group? Late on Saturday, the New York Times published a story with this lede:The most important group of religious leaders in Iran has called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate, an act of defiance against the country's supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country's clerical establishment.The TImes has since shifted its description of the group -- they're now described as "an important group of religious leaders" -- and several readers believe the Times misidentified the group in question. Here's one such email:
The statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult -- if not impossible.I'd like to point out a couple of important issues. The "Top clerical group defies Supreme Leader" has considerable factual flaw. Seems NYT was a bit confused over the issue and the article's opening as posted on NYT site: "The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country's supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country's clerical establishment. " is a gross exaggeration of facts, as I will explain.
The statement apparently came from the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum headed by Hojjat-ol-islam Musavi Tabrizi, and is not nearly as powerful as stated by NYT. It is a very loosely worded statement which, certainly does not directly declare the AN's Gov't or the elections illegitimate and, just poses the question "In light of all these discrepancies, would it be possible to accept the legitimacy of elections entirely based on the confirmation of Guardians Council? In current situation, could the government resulted from all these infractions be regarded legitimate?".
But the real powerful top clerical group that has perhaps been innocently presumed as the source of this statement, is the extreme-right Association of Teachers of Quom (a more accurate translation of the name would be: Association of Teachers of Quom's Theological School). The name of both en ies in Farsi is exactly the same - except for lack of the word "Researchers" in the latter. Had the second en y actually made a statement in this context, the "KhameneiNejad" show would certainly have been over and done with.
Wow, amazing that Iran is undergoing this...just out of the blue. Must be because Obama is in office
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