Khamenei

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3018932.stm

Iran's elected leaders must share power with its spiritual heads

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Iran's political and religious head


BBC: Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Profile: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Iran's spiritual leader and highest authority. His veto is final in Iranian political affairs.

He is widely regarded as the figurehead of the country's conservative establishment and has been described as one of the three defining influences of the revolution.

Despite Western focus on President Ahmadinejad since his taking office in 2005, the most important figure in Iran is Ayatollah Khamenei in his role as Supreme Leader.

Ayatollah Khamenei has repeatedly denounced the West, and in particular the United States.

However, in a speech in 2008 he said that he had "never said that the relations will remain severed forever". That no doubt gave some comfort to US President Barack Obama, who has taken the unprecedented step of making overtures to the Iranian leader.

In 1989, Ayatollah Khamenei succeeded the original Supreme Leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini. Before that he was president for two successive terms from 1981-1989.

Ayatollah Khomeini was a cleric of the highest rank, a Source of Emulation. When Ayatollah Khamenei took over, the constitution had to be amended to allow the post to be held by a lower-ranking theologian.

Powers questioned

When he was president he was often at odds with the then Prime Minister, Ali Hossein Mousavi, whom he perceived as being left-leaning.

However, as Mr Mousavi had the backing of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, their conflicting views on economic, social and religious policies were left to fester.

One of Ayatollah Khamenei's first decisions, when he became Supreme Leader on the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, was to revise the constitution to abolish the post of prime minister.

Ayatollah Khamenei is often described as lacking the charm and popular support of his predecessor.

He brought to the position of Supreme Leader the powers and contacts he had made as president and has cemented his position by developing networks in the various institutions and security forces in Iran.

In 1997 he famously clashed with Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a respected scholar who ranks higher in the hierarchy.

Ayatollah Montazeri, who is also one of Iran's leading dissidents, questioned the powers of the Supreme Leader. This led to the closure of his religious school, an attack on his office in Qom and to a period of house arrest.

In November 1999, Ayatollah Khamenei went on TV to defend a controversial Special Clerical Court, which had just found the editor of a leading reformist daily guilty of publishing anti-Islamic articles.

Khordad editor and former interior minister Abdullah Nuri had described the court as "illegal". Khamenei hit back, saying there was a need for a court that "had the courage to put a cleric on trial and demand answers".

Conservative control

As Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has the power to select directly and indirectly members of the Guardian Council. The council is in charge of elections, both the supervision of the polls and the confirming of candidates.

In the 2004 elections it disqualified thousands of parliamentary candidates including many moderates, reformists and members of the previous government. Conservatives won 70% of the vote.

Hadi Khamenei, the Supreme Leader's brother, criticised the disqualifications, saying they distorted Iranian democracy.

But Ayatollah Khamenei has consistently backed the supervisory role of the conservative Guardian Council.

Clerical rule

In August 2000, he sided with the Guardian Council in rejecting a Majlis (parliament) bill reforming the country's press law.

A letter he wrote to parliament, quoted by the state news agency, said the current law had prevented the "enemies of Islam" from taking over the press.

"Thus any re-interpretation of the law is not in the interests of the country," the letter argued.

The letter led to scuffles in the Majlis and to a debate on the powers of the Majlis and the Guardian Council. The press bill was withdrawn.

Ayatollah Khamenei did however intervene in the case of pro-reform academic Hashem Aghajari. In November 2002, Mr Aghajari said Muslims should re-interpret Islam rather than blindly follow leaders.

The judiciary sentenced him to death. When protests erupted in the capital, Khamenei ordered a review of the sentence which was later commuted to a prison sentence.

In May 2003, over 100 members of parliament wrote an open letter to the ayatollah, warning that unless he removed obstacles to reforms the survival of the Islamic system would be at risk.

The MPs said Iran was facing a stark choice between democracy and dictatorship. The letter was posted on two Iranian websites, but was removed by the authorities after 24 hours.

Foreign relations

In his inaugural address as president in 1981, Ayatollah Khamenei vowed to stamp out "deviation, liberalism, and American-influenced leftists", in a statement that set the tone for his leadership.

When pro-reform students rioted in June 2003, Ayatollah Khamenei was quick to warn that such actions would not be tolerated. And he blamed the US for stirring up the trouble.

"Leaders do not have the right to have any pity whatsoever for the mercenaries of the enemy," he said in a broadcast speech.

During and after the US-led war on Iraq, he was sharply critical of Washington's policies. "The occupation of Iraq is not a morsel that the US can swallow," he said.

In 2009, when the US president offered Iran a "new beginning" of diplomatic engagement, Khamenei's response was muted.

Addressing students a few days after the Iranian New Year message, he said he had seen no change in America's attitude or policy, singling out US support for Israel and sanctions against Iran.

But he said that if President Obama altered the US position, Iran was prepared to follow suit.

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Iran wins Iraq

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Iran Ayatollah is Poster Boy for Influence in Iraq

AP - 25 September 2012

BAGHDAD - After years of growing influence, a new sign of Iran's presence in Iraq has hit the streets. Thousands of signs, that is, depicting Iran's supreme leader gently smiling to a population once mobilized against the Islamic Republic in eight years of war.

The campaign underscores widespread doubts over just how independent Iraq and its majority Shiite Muslim population can remain from its eastern neighbor, the region's Shiite heavyweight, now that U.S. troops have left the country.

The posters of Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei first appeared in at least six Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and across Iraq's Shiite-dominated south in August, as part of an annual pro-Palestinian observance started years ago by Iran. They have conspicuously remained up since then.

"When I see these pictures, I feel I am in Tehran, not Baghdad," said Asim Salman, 44, a Shiite and owner of a Baghdad cafe. "Authorities must remove these posters, which make us angry."

In Basra, located 550 kilometers (340 miles) south of the capital, they hang near donation boxes decorated with scripts in both countries' languages — Arabic and Farsi.

A senior official in Baghdad's local government said municipal workers fear retribution from Shiite militias loyal to Iran in if they take them down. He himself spoke on condition anonymity out of concerns for his safety.

One such militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, even boasted that it launched the poster campaign, part of a trend that's chipping away at nearly a decade's worth of U.S.-led efforts to bring a Western-style democracy here.

Sheik Ali al-Zaidi, a senior official in the militia, said they distributed some 20,000 posters of Khamenei across Iraq. He said Khamenei "enjoys public support all over the world" including Iraq, where he "is hailed as a political and religious leader."

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or Band of the People of Righteousness, carried out deadly attacks against U.S. troops before their withdrawal last year. This month, the group threatened U.S. interests in Iraq as part of the backlash over a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

Iraqi and U.S. intelligence officials have estimated that Iran sends the militia about $5 million in cash and weapons each month. The officials believe there are fewer than 1,000 Asaib Ahl al-Haq militiamen, and that their leaders live in Iran.

Tensions between Iraq and Iran have never fully dissipated over their 1980-1988 war that left nearly half a million dead. But Iran's clout with Iraq's Shiites picked up after Saddam Hussein's fall from power in 2003, and, in many ways, accelerated since the U.S. military pulled out.

Iran has backed at least three Shiite militias in Iraq with weapons, training and millions of dollars in funding. Billion-dollar trade pacts have emerged between Tehran and Baghdad, and Iran has opened at least two banks in Iraq that are blacklisted by the United States.

Religious ties also have been renewed, with thousands of Iranian pilgrims visiting holy Shiite sites in Iraq daily, including in Najaf, where Iranian rials are as common a currency as Iraqi dinars, and Farsi is easily understood.

The posters may reflect a push among some Shiite groups for a clerical system similar to Iran's. Tehran is widely believed to be lobbying for a member of its ruling theocracy, Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to succeed Iraq's 81-year-old Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Al-Sistani opposes a formal political role for Iraq's religious establishment, while Shahroudi is part of Iran's system of "velayat-e-faqih," or rule by Islamic clerics. Iraq's Sunnis and Kurds, however, have no taste for blurring Shiite politics and religion.

Ever since the ouster of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, political leaders in Iraq have sought to rebuild and strengthen relations with Iran, which has responded in kind. Many of Iraq's Shiites sought sanctuary in Iran during Saddam's reign, and some now hold key government posts.

Tehran has not been shy about wielding its influence. It was at Iran's urging that hardline Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr grudgingly threw his political support behind longtime foe Nouri al-Maliki, allowing him to remain prime minister in 2010 after falling short in national elections.

In return, al-Maliki last year all but ignored Iranian military incursions on Kurdish lands in northern Iraq. The government also has delayed, and in al-Sadr's case, quashed, arrest warrants on militants backed by Iranian forces and financiers.

Still, even some Iraqi Shiites, like the cleric al-Sadr and the cafe owner Salman, advocate retaining strong Iraqi nationalism and their Arab identity instead of becoming a Persian outpost.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh condemned the Khamenei posters and said they could add to the already-strained political unrest in the country. But he said the federal government is powerless to remove them.

"These posters are adding a new dispute in Iraq's politics and they might lead to a negative impact," al-Dabbagh said. "The local governments should deal with such situations," he said.

Sunnis were less diplomatic in their assessment.

Hamid al-Mutlaq, a leading lawmaker, blasted the poster campaign, which he said shows Iran's efforts to amass power in Iraq. Raad Abdul-Rahman, a government worker, said the posters prove that Iraq is becoming "a total Iranian stooge."

"In the past, we used to encounter the pictures of the Arab dictator Saddam," Abdul-Rahman said, referring to the posters and statues of the former president that used to be ubiquitous across Baghdad and the rest of the country. "But now pictures of the Persian dictator are taking over."

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