Iran’s Ayatollah Montazeri dies

TEHRAN - The Iranian Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, a fierce critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has died.

Montazeri died Saturday night in his sleep at his home in the religious city of Qom after a long illness, the reports said.

The ayatollah had been banished from politics since the late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, dismissed him as his designated heir in March 1989 for criticising the Islamic system.

Montazeri accused Ahmadinejad’s government of dictatorship after his disputed re-election in June.

In 2001, the ayatollah suffered a severe heart attack just after he was released from a five-year period of house arrest and was hospitalised for a long time.

Despite political isolation and house arrest for more than ten years, Montazeri remained a respected religious figure and one of Iran’s most acknowledged marjae taqlids, to whom Muslims refer for religious guidance.

While reformist circles supported Montazeri, the hardliners branded him as secular and condemned his critical approach toward Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini as the country’s supreme leader in June 1989.

Montazeri criticised the Iranian election system several times and said under these conditions and without genuine and fair competition, elected officials could not respond to the people’s needs.

The Ayatollah also criticised the foreign policies of President Ahmadinejad.

He said the errors committed by the Islamic Republic and the provocations of the Ahmadinejad government brought about an international cohesion that led to the sanctions against Iran with worrying consequences for the population.

Despite his religious status in Iran, Montazeri was regarded by the system as a dissident and as a result Iranian state television has not paid any special attention to his death.

According to the Fars news agency, so far only Grand Ayatollah Yussef Sanei, himself an Ahmadinejad critic and close to the reformist opposition, has been one of the few high-ranking clerics to have expressed his condolences.