Clerical Elites Not Supportive of Supreme Leader

Rooz online, In a meeting with the people of Qom, the Islamic republic of Iran’s supreme leader ayatollah Khamenei directly accused the opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi of being exploited by foreign powers. He said, “There is still a lot to be clarified and analyzed regarding various aspects of this enemy-planned sedition”. Sedition is the term Iranian officials use for the widespread protests that erupted after the 2009 presidential elections. He added, “These personalities addressed by everyone as the leaders of sedition were pushed on the stage by the enemy. One should not get manipulated by the enemy; should this happen, then one must realize his mistake half way and turn away, but they did not”. Khamenei was the very first official to have used the term “sedition.”

In reference to the so-called behind the scene agents of the protests, he also said, “The real agents were those individuals who devised this sedition or imagined it in their wildest dreams. They schemed their plot believing that the Islamic republic would dismantle and, then not only would the truth of religion but also its ideals would banish altogether. The plan was to dismantle the government their way. It is clear what they wanted to do after that. But if the regime and the government did not fall apart the way they wanted, they would turn the country into chaos.”

In his speech Khamenei compared the post-election protests to “a caricature of the Islamic revolution”: “Like shadows imitating the moves of a hero, they too would imitate the revolution; that was the plan”.

Meanwhile, a conservative party group exposed the sense of fear and doubt among the elites in the aftermath of last year’s protests and complained that this fear had driven them into “silence and fear so much that they could no longer defend the supreme leader”. In this regard, the Assembly for Public Demands of Mashhad (Majmae Motalebe Mardomi Mashhad) expressed its regret for the lack of support for Ayatollah Khamenehi among academics and clerics, and for “their big mistake”. It added that many among the clerical elites don’t support the velayate faqih (rule of the clergy) and look down at the leadership position as one of “political elitism”. Also according to this statement, many among the clerical and academic elites decided not to defend the supreme leader against last year’s events for fear of “overspending their reputation and status”. This is the very first time that a conservative group puts the defense of the supreme leader in such terms as gambling with “reputation and status” and admits that even among the conservatives some hold the leader as an elite politician and not the vali faqih (rule of clerics). In turn, the leader of the Islamic republic has labeled such people as “shortsighted elite”. The supreme leader also believes that “the vote-rigging claims against the election were propagated because of the same shortsighted elite”.