Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Asia Times reports more on the letter by Ayatollah Taheri as he quit his position as Imam of Isfahan. While pointing out the pathetic response of the EU to the students protesting in Iran the article says that Bush's statement is late and needs to offer something more hopeful to the Iranians. An interesting possibility that the writer brings up is that there may need be no US military operation if there is a full scale revolution in Iran. I don't think US military action would be unnecessary but it the numbers involved may be reduced.

No less a figure than the Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri, the imam of the major city of Isfahan, its Friday prayers speaker for the past 30 years and the official representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, resigned his posts on July 9 and released a stinging five-page letter denouncing the Islamic Republic's regime of conservative clerics. "I am embarrassed and ashamed," he wrote. "You cannot blame [the United States and the Shah] for the failures and corruption of our country [which] have all resulted in our people turning away from Islam, rising unemployment, inflation, high cost of living and a satanic gap between the rich and the poor."

He describes the regime as a vast mafia that is responsible for "a failing foreign policy, corruption, bribery, brain drain and the harassment and jailing of journalists and writers". These people, he said, "are riding on a stupid camel of power onto the field of politics". And worst of all, this mafia gang funds and supports vigilante forces who "continuously sharpen their dinosaur fangs of violence, with the hope of marrying their ugly, oppressive, fear-evoking bride of violence to religion".

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