Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The silent cleric who holds the key to Iran's future


Iranian politics do not run on the supposedly Western principle of majority rule

By Robert Fisk

"We like to believe – and newspapers and television like us to believe – that the battle for Iran is being fought on the streets of Tehran, of Isfahan, of Najafabad. Untrue.

The future of the nation is being decided in Qom, among the clerical leaders of Iranian Shia Islam; and one of the most influential of them – perhaps the closest of all the ayatollahs to President Ahmadinejad – is silent.

Just why Mohammed Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a member of the Assembly of Experts – the clerics who choose the "Supreme Leader" of Iran – should refrain from comment at such a critical and violent period of the Islamic Republic's history, is unclear......"

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