The New York Times reports:
The web sites of the clerics, Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei and Grand Ayatollah Asadollah Bayat-Zanjani, who are both “sources of emulation,” the highest clerical rank in Shiite Islam, were first reported blocked by news sites linked with Iran’s political opposition movement on Sunday. The official site of a third top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali-Mohammad Dastgheib, was reported blocked early last month.
As I wrote back in January in World Politics Review:
For the past seven months, countless parallels have been drawn between the current uprising gripping Iran and the events that ultimately led to the demise of the Pahlavi monarchy some 30 years ago. Whether or not the comparisons are accurate, one irony that cannot be escaped is that the regime is facing increasingly vocal dissent from the very clerical class that brought it to power. In fact, as the Islamic Republic deviates more and more from its theocratic roots and transforms into a military dictatorship, it risks alienating the very marjas who have given it legitimacy since its inception.
It appears that as the New Right continues to consolidate its stranglehold on the regime’s institutions, a moral resistance is beginning to take shape within Iran’s clerical class against, rather tellingly, the Islamic Republic. A reiteration, indeed, of how very far removed the Iranian regime of the previous thirty years has become from what now rules Iran.
On a related note, Grand Ayatollah Dasthgheib, who lashed out against Khamenei a year ago, has stated that “the person of the Velayat-e faqih has no right to interfere in the affairs of the people,” in response to a question posted to him from a worshiper on his website. It has never been more apparent of how distant Khamenei — who was only elevated to Ayatollah overnight so that he could succeed Khomeini — has grown from the country’s most respected clerics. It was just August of last year, in the immediate fallout from the contested election, when an anonymous letter was circulated within the clergy labeling him a dictator and demanding his removal.
If Khamenei is able to maintain his grip on power from an increasingly encroaching executive and paramilitary, then the absolute latest the Islamic Republic will face its next turning point will be upon his death, when a new Supreme Leader will have to be chosen. If an ultraconservative aligned with the New Right (like Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi) is pushed through, then expect the final turning of the key in what can clearly now be called the Iranian coup of 2009.
And should that come to pass, then a pervasive spiritual and Islamic resistance to the new ruling class — not unlike that which galvanized Iran against the Shah — would certainly fall within the realm of possibility.
