 merrie says: 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 documents 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 specific charges of fraud included the printing of millions of extra ballots before the vote. 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. Some seminaries in Qum rely on the governm... illegitimate??? |
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