As the latest round of Stalinist-style show trials restart in Tehran, a leading ayatollah today called for clerics to speak out against the “military regime.”
The current regime is not a legitimate heir of the 1979 revolution, said Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic and a former confidant to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
“We didn’t want a mere change in title and slogans while the same oppressions and violations of rights continue under the cover of Islamic government,” he said in a statement posted to his website.
“The grand ayatollahs are well aware of their influence on the regime, and they know quite well the regime needs their approval for its legitimacy,” he wrote.
In the latest session of a mass trial that began on 1 August, six opposition activists appeared in court on charges of rioting and plotting to bring down the government. The proceedings featured admissions of guilt in the latest of a series of forced confessions.
“Prior to the election, we were talking about issues like fraud and were also advocating massively against the officials of the regime,” said one activist. “We also staged a rebellion against the regime… the election was just a pretext to hit at the symbol of the regime,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The post-election crackdown has cast doubt on the credibility – moral as well as practical – of the Obama administration’s decision to engage Tehran.
Engagement was “the right idea,” write Robin Wright and Robert Litwak, but the theocracy’s repressive turn “marks a turning point for Iran’s revolution” that does not augur well for future relations.
The Islamic revolution was one of the three great revolutions of the twentieth century and the evolution of the Russian, Chinese and Iranian revolutionary regimes suggests that they only engage with the democratic West once they reach a stage of maturity.
As recent events confirm the ascendancy of factions committed to maintaining Iran’s revolutionary status and momentum, the Obama administration “would be well-advised to step back and recalculate what conditions would lead Iran to feel that the benefits of beginning the transition to a normal state outweigh the costs of sticking to the revolutionary zealotry increasingly rejected by its own people.”
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