An influential and high-ranking Iranian cleric has issued a scathing denunciation of the Islamic Republic’s current leadership, calling on senior Shiite Muslim clergy in the Iranian holy cities of Qom and Mashhad as well as the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf and beyond to speak out against the regime.
Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri is one of the founders of the Islamic Republic. He was a confidant to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini before he fell out of favor in the late 1980s.
In a statement issued today, he said that Iran had become a “military regime” not the Islamic government envisioned at time of the 1979 revolution.
He said it was his fellow clergymen’s “religious duty” to speak out against the the government’s abuses.
