Iran’s political crisis intensified Wednesday when the nation’s main opposition figure announced that he would create a political organization to “lay the groundwork for a large-scale social movement” stemming from his disputed election loss to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Many supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi had feared the announcement would amount to a disavowal of the civil disobedience campaign that has sprung up since the June election in which the government has been accused of massive vote fraud. Instead, Mousavi explicitly praised the protest movement as a cornerstone for change in Iran.In his most extensive remarks in weeks, Mousavi said that “power is always inclined to become absolute, and only people’s movements can put a hold on this inclination.” Several other opposition figures, emboldened by high-ranking clerics and unbowed by the severe government crackdown on protesters, have also issued challenges to the authority of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his ally Ahmadinejad.A senior cleric on Wednesday issued a fatwa, or religious edict, encouraging Iranian officials to skip Ahmadinejad’s inauguration in early August, and former President Mohammad Khatami warned that if his proposal for a referendum on the disputed election was rejected, “all other legal channels would be practically closed on people,” leading to unpredictable consequences.And in a further slap at Khamenei, Iran’s highest political and spiri… >>>
