Shayan Ghajar

Prominent opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi issued a strongly-worded statement June 20 on Saham News, Karroubi’s website. The latest statement breaks from previous statements in that it directly attacks the position of the Supreme Leader, an audacious critique that is unprecedented in terms of its scope and detail, coming from one of the de facto leaders of the Green Movement. The statement comes less than a week after Mir Hossein Moussavi’s 18th Statement, a “charter” for the Green Movement. Karroubi’s statement, however, is more strongly worded and specific in its criticism of the government’s behavior.

Much of Karroubi’s statement is a chastening rebuke to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, castigating his censure of dissent and his tacit support for the brutalities unleashed on opposition groups and protesters in the past year. Karroubi begins his critique by describing how state-run media has been utilized to defame and libel Shi’a clerics in the opposition, such as Ayatollah Sanei and the late Ayatollah Montazeri. How, Karroubi asks, can a government professing to support Shi’ism attack some of its most learned religious men in the name of religion?

Karroubi continues with yet more scathing attacks, rhetorically questioning how a government can have the temerity to use words such as “justice” while simultaneously shooting peaceful protesters in cold blood.

In short order, Karroubi moves into a lengthy attack of the Supreme Leader’s actions and attitudes in the wake of the June 2009 election. Karroubi says Khamenei has taken “a hatchet to the foundations” of the Islamic Revolution. Karroubi compounded his excoriation by declaring that none of the prophets or saints of Islam ever claimed the extensive powers of the Supreme Leader. “I doubt that God Himself would claim the right to treat his servants [the way the Supreme Leader treats Iranians].”

Adopting a different angle of attack, Karroubi also aimed part of his criticism at reminding the Supreme Leader of a time in which he was less powerful than Moussavi, during Moussavi’s tenure as Prime Minister from 1981 to 1989. Ayatollah Khamenei voted against his teacher, Ayatollah Khomeini’s choice of Moussavi as Prime Minister, Karroubi points out, yet Khomeini did not silence or punish him for his dissent at all. Karroubi, with this anecdote, seeks to humble Khamenei by reminding him that not even Ayatollah Khomeini, with all his power, treated his opposition as harshly as the Green Movement has been, and that at one time, Khomeini overruled Khamenei’s actions in favor of Moussavi.

Karroubi closes his statement by mocking the mentality of President Ahmadinejad’s government, which, Karroubi says, professes to bring peace and Islamic ideals to the world while creating prisons that specialize in torture within Iran.

Karroubi’s statement is unprecedented in the scope and intensity of its attack on the Supreme Leader. While previous opposition notables and even famous clerics have criticized Khamenei before, neither Moussavi nor Karroubi had previously gone into such detail or used such harsh language in public against the Supreme Leader.

It is worth noting that Moussavi has yet to issue a statement as bombastic as Karroubi’s latest; in fact, Karroubi’s timing in issuing his statement less than a week after Moussavi’s may be a subtle comment to the effect that Karroubi believed harsher words than Moussavi’s were called for in the increasingly desperate situation the Green leaders face. Some critics of Moussavi’s latest statement felt that his words lacked the substance needed to reinvigorate the opposition after months of crackdowns.

Karroubi’s statement will likely be fiery enough that he will avoid the same criticism within the Green Movement, yet consequently, he will also likely face a very harsh reaction from the government’s cadres of hardliners for his direct attack on the Supreme Leader.