Clerics Supporting Ahmadinejad

1. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic)
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Iran’s Supreme Leader and highest authority. He was president for two successive terms (1981–1989). In 1989, he succeeded the original Supreme Leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini.

In 1963, Khamenei was involved in the massive student protests against the Shah’s Western-oriented reforms. Khamenei continued his defiance of the United States during the 1990s. In 2002, he launched a drive to make the universities more Islamic, and to increase censorship of newspapers, books, and film. He often accuses Washington of interfering in the affairs of Iran.

In the June 12, 2009, presidential election, Khamenei allegedly supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The cleric denied the opposition’s accusations that the results of the election were rigged, praising the officially declared landslide of his protégé Ahmadinejad as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”

In the aftermath of the massive demonstrations, Khamenei faces the greatest challenge to his authority since he became the Supreme Leader in 1989. Some moderate clerics have publicly criticized his endorsement of the election results. Street demonstrators shout he is a dictator—behavior that was unprecedented in Iran. If the political dynamic shifts and the opposition movement becomes more powerful, Khamenei and his followers will be left in a vulnerable position.

2. Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is a hard-line Iranian Shiite cleric who is widely seen as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor. Mesbah-Yazdi has been described as “a theoretician of the radicals” in Iran, with extremely hostile viewpoints toward the West. He is considered the first senior figure in Iran to have publicly endorsed a military nuclear program. Mesbah-Yazdi supports a return to what he sees as the values of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and is also a firm opponent of the opposition Green movement in Iran, which he believes an Islamic government must combat.

3. Ayatollah Ali Jannati (Secretary of the Guardian Council)
Ayatollah Ali Jannati is an Iranian politician, fundamentalist cleric, and a founding member of Haghani school, a seminary school in the holy city of Qom responsible for training many hard-line clerics close to Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, with close ties with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mesbah-Yazdi. Jannati is considered close to the Iranian Islamic conservative establishment, and is heavily criticized by the reformists for his active role in not approving reformist candidates to run in various elections. Jannati wields considerable influence because he simultaneously holds seats in the most powerful governmental bodies—the Guardian Council, Expediency Council, and Assembly of Experts.

Jannati’s support of Ahmadinejad during and after the June 12 election faced harsh criticism inside Iran. He condemned the protests following the election and has asked the judiciary to punish those involved in the protests.

4. Ayatollah Hossein Nouri-Hamedani (Source of Emulation)
Ayatollah Hossein Nouri-Hamedani is an Iranian Shiite source of emulation. Nouri-Hamedani has been called a hard-line cleric for supporting Khamenei and the administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Nouri-Hamedani famously has said, “Crazy ideas such as secularism, liberalism, and humanism are part of our enemies’ plans to sow disunity.” He was the only major source of emulation in Qom, the holy Shiite city, to congratulate Ahmadinejad after the June 12 election.

5. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi (Vice Chairman of the Assembly of Experts)
Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi is a hard-line Iranian cleric who served as the head of Judiciary System of Iran between 1989 and 1999. He is currently the vice chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is headed by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Yazdi has close ties to Ali Khamenei and is believed to have his eyes set on Rafsanjani’s seat as head of the Assembly of Experts. Following the protests in the aftermath of the June 12 election, Yazdi began a campaign in the Assembly of Experts to collect signatures condemning the protestors and criticizing Rafsanjani for not supporting Khamenei.

6. Hojjatol-Eslam Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhei
Ezhei became a household name when he presided over the trial of Tehran’s mayor, Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, in 1997. (Karbaschi supported then-president Seyed Mohammmad Khatami.) He has served in many capacities in the Judiciary and the Ministry of Intelligence, including as prosecutor for the Special Clerical Court and minister of intelligence. He currently is Iran’s chief prosecutor. Ezhei served as Ahmadinejad’s minster of intelligence until he was dismissed by Ahmadinejad for not handling the June 12 election crisis well. He has appeared on national television condemning presidential contender Mehdi Karroubi for accusing the regime of torture and sexual abuse in Iran’s prisons.

Clerics Opposing Ahmadinejad

1. Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (Chairman of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts)
Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani is an influential Iranian politician and former speaker of the parliament and president (1989–1997). Currently, he holds the position of chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for appointing or removing the Supreme Leader.

Rafsanjani has been described as a centrist and a “pragmatic conservative.” He supports a free market domestically and seeks to avoid conflict with the United States and the West. In his view, the main solution to the nuclear issue would be to gain the trust of Europe and America and reassure the world hat the Iranian nuclear industry will never be converted for military use.

For the most part, Rafsanjani was silent about the controversial June 12 election and its aftermath. He wrote a letter to Supreme Leader Khamenei complaining about Ahmadinejad prior to the election. In his first Friday as the prayer leader, Rafsanjani criticized the actions taken by the regime to crush the protests and called for unity.

2. Hojjatol-Eslam Mehdi Karroubi (Presidential Candidate)
Hojjatol-Eslam Mehdi Karroubi is an Iranian reformist politician, cleric, and chairman of the National Trust Party. He was chairman of the parliament (1989-92 and 2000–04), and a presidential candidate in the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections. Karroubi, who was parliamentary speaker (1989–92 and 2000–04), resigned from his post in June 2005.

Karroubi is a critic of the Guardian Council and Iran’s judicial system. He considers himself a pragmatic reformist and supports the idea of a dialogue with the United States aiming at resolving long standing conflicts. He is probably the most outspoken critic of Ahmadinejad.

3. Hojjatol-Eslam Mohammad Khatami
Hojjatol-Eslam Mohammad Khatami served as the fifth president of Iran (1997–2005). During his presidency, he advocated freedom of expression, tolerance, civil society, constructive diplomatic relations with other states including those in the European Union and Asia, and an economic policy that supported a free market and foreign investment. Khatami is known for his proposal of a “Dialogue Among Civilizations.”

Although he initially was a candidate in the 2009 Iranian presidential election, he dropped out of the race early in order to endorse another reformist candidate, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, who Khatami claimed would stand a better chance against Iran’s conservative establishment to offer true change and reform.

4. Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri
Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri is an Iranian scholar, theologian, writer, and a major Shiite source of emulation. He is known as one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. He is best known as the one-time designated successor to the revolution’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Montazeri was swiftly replaced as successor to Ayatollah Khomeini by the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Montazeri criticizes President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his nuclear and economic policies. Concerning the 2009 presidential election, Montazeri stated that “no one in their right mind can believe the results were fairly counted.”

5. Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei
Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei is an Iranian scholar, renowned theologian, and Islamic philosopher. He is known as a senior reformist cleric. Concerning Iran’s nuclear program, he stated that “it is self-evident in Islam that it is prohibited to have nuclear bombs. It is eternal law, because the basic function of these weapons is to kill innocent people. This cannot be reversed.”

During the 2009 Iranian election protests, rumors arose that he had issued a religious edict proclaiming that Ahmadinejad was “not the president and that it is forbidden to cooperate with his government.”

6. Grand Ayatollah Assadollah Bayat-Zanjani
Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Zanjani was a pro-democracy activist. In 1972, he was arrested and spent a year in prison. After the revolution, he was involved in the launching of the Islamic Republican Party. Zanjani was also a member of a committee tasked with reassessing the Iranian constitution and he was elected three times to the Iranian parliament.

In an interview with the German newspaper Financial Times Deutschland, Bayat-Zanjani said: “Ahmadinejad no longer adheres to the will of the population.” Saying this was a “great danger,” he accused Ahmadinejad of breaching the law, grave infringement on established freedoms, and illegal empowerment of the Islamic Revolution Guards. Bayat-Zanjani questioned the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government, saying: “If people don’t trust the government, it automatically loses its legitimacy.” Later, Bayat-Zanjani’s office denied that he had made such statements.

7. Hojjatol-Eslam Mohsen Kadivar
Hojjatol-Eslam Mohsen Kadivar is a progressive cleric who was sentenced by the Special Court for the Clergy (Dadgah-e Vizhe-ye Ruhaniyat) on April 21, 1999. The charges brought against him reportedly included “propaganda against the sacred system of the Islamic Republic,” “publishing lies,” and “confusing public opinion.” These charges are believed to relate his questioning the role of the clergy in the government of Iran.

“I believe in a religious democratic state,” he said. “I believe that democracy and Islam are compatible. But a religious state is possible only when it is elected and governed by the people. And the governing of the country should not be necessarily in the hands of the clergy. So what I support is the healthy state the reformers are promoting as an Islamic Republic, not what exists now.”

He was released in July 2004 but is still banned from teaching in his former position as university professor. He is now a professor at Duke University.