Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri is among the few clerics who has retained popular support. As a member of the powerful Assembly of the Experts, he frequently denounced extremism and corruption, and, unlike many of his peers, he refrained from involvement in lucrative financial dealings. Taheri also happens to be a staunch supporter of Iran's embattled President Mohammad Khatami. Thus, many political observers view his shocking resignation as a harbinger of political struggle in the Islamic Republic.
Taheri resigned July 10 as Friday prayers speaker in the city of Isfahan, a post he had held for three decades. The move appears to have opened a spirited campaign to break the conservatives' hold on power. Reform advocates have become increasingly exasperated by the ability of un-elected conservative bodies to control Iran's political and economic agenda. The conservatives are using their power to deny the popular majority's desire for political and economic liberalization, reformers assert.
Addressing the "people of Iran" in the form of an open letter, and lacking the customary difference to the Supreme Leader, Taheri's resignation letter attacked the country's religious hierarchy. "I shudder to think how you [the conservative clerics] and your family have plundered this country as if it has been your personal fief," Taheri said in his resignation letter, the text of which was published by the reform-minded Norouz newspaper. "How long more can we tolerate this corruption, this duplicity and this utter ineptitude?
Editor's note:
Ardeshir Moaveni is a free-lance journalist in Tehran
