Shift by Influential Clerics Bolsters Iran Opposition
Some members of Iran's powerful clerical class
buy wow goldare stepping up their antigovernment protests over Iran's election in defiance of the country's supreme leader, bringing potential aid to opposition figures as the regime is increasingly labeling them foreign-sponsored traitors.View Full ImageAgence France-Presse/Getty Images Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, left, cleric and
cheap wow goldformer Iranian president, met over the weekend with relatives of individuals arrested in post-election violence; the move was widely seen as a show of support for the political opposition.An influential group of religious scholars seen as politically neutral during the presidential election called the country's highest election
world of warcraft goldarbiter, the Guardian Council, biased, and said the June 12 election was "invalid." Earlier, it had endorsed the official result that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Houssein Mousavi and other challengers by a wide margin.The group, with no government role, has little practical
wow goldability to change the election outcome. But its new posture may carry moral weight with Iranians after security forces have quashed street protests and jailed hundreds of opposition supporters.It highlights a growing unease among Iran's scholarly ruling class about the direction of the country, and questions the theological underpinning of the Islamic Republic: that the supreme leader and the institutions under him are infallible."I'm not sure of the Persian equivalent of 'crossing the Rubicon,' but we are seeing it now. The future of the Islamic Republic, which has in recent years become a fig leaf for keeping a small clique of people in power, is now in question," said Michael Axworthy, director of Exeter University's Center for Persian and Iranian Studies in the U.K.
