Powerful Iranian cleric barred from delivering Quds Day prayers

          
          Powerftil Iranian cleric barred from delivering Quds Day prayers - lafint. , http://www.latines.coin'news/nafionworld/world/la-fgw-iran-prayersl7...
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          latim cs.com
          Powerful Iranian cleric barred from delivering Quds Day prayers
          Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who supports the opposition movement, will be replaced by
          Ahmadinejad and an ally on the day of solidarity with Palestinians, reports say.
          Anti-government rallies are planned.
          By Borzou Daragahi
          September 17, 2009
          Reporting from Beirut
          A powerful cleric who supports Iran's opposition movement
          has been barred from delivering Friday prayers during Quds J AL
          Day in Tehran, an annual day of solidarity with the Palestinian
          cause that is being turned into a protest against authorities in a . , A P A N A i R L I N E S
          move that suggests the declining influence of Iranian
          moderates within the political elite. New 777-300ER service
          from Chicago and LAX to Tokyo
          Instead of Ayatollah Mi Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Friday's
          speakers will be President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his -
          hard-line ally Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, the semi-official
          Iranian Labor News Agency reported, citing a spokesman for
          the prayers commission.
          See the JAL difference now
          Protesters opposed to Ahmadinej ad's reelection are planning to -
          take to the streets Friday in an attempt to transform the annual rallies in favor of Palestinian rights into
          opposition marches. Presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who lost to
          Ahmadinejad in a June election marred by allegations of vote fraud, along with former President Mohammad
          Khatami have announced plans to join protesters.
          Supporters of Mousavi's Green Path of Hope movement responded defiantly to the news that Rafsanjani had
          been pushed aside, calling on demonstrators to take to the streets anyway while boycotting the prayer sermon
          after the rally.
          “They kept Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani from leading this week's Friday Prayers clearly out of fear,” said a
          statement posted at the reformist website Mowjcamp.com . “This badly thought-out gesture will certainly elicit
          an appropriate response from the understanding and green-thinking nation of Iran.”
          Rafsanjani has almost always led Friday prayers on Quds Day over the last 25 years. Decades ago he
          translated Arabic-language tracts in support of the Palestinian cause. Rafsanj ani, who heads government
          bodies that oversee the office of Supreme Leader Mi Khamenei and mediate disputes between parliament and
          the presidency, has delivered Friday prayers only once since the upheaval that followed Iran's presidential
          elections. His July 17 sermon turned into a massive street protest in the capital.
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          Powerftil Iranian cleric barred from delivering Quds Day prayers - lafint. , littp://www.latines.conVnews/nafionworld/world/la-fgw-iran-prayersl7...
          The move to sideline Rafsanjani suggests his continuing marginalization from Iran's inner circle of power as a
          group of radical hard-liners and Revolutionary Guard leaders surrounding Ahmadinejad ascend to power.
          Ahmadinej ad's supporters have called for the arrest of Rafsanjani's well-connected son, Mehdi Rafsanjani,
          after defendants at recent televised court proceedings, widely derided as show trials, accused him of
          undermining the Islamic Republic.
          The declining influence and continued ostracism of relative moderates within the political establishment and
          the emergence of less palatable hard-liners may make it tougher for the West and Tehran to come to an
          agreement on Iran's controversial nuclear program.
          But the blunt move to exclude a stalwart pillar of the Islamic Republic also suggests authorities' anxiety about
          rising opposition enthusiasm to turn public events into protest rallies. Walls in cities and towns have been
          plastered with posters calling on opposition supporters to take to the streets, photographs posted to the
          Internet show.
          “I ask the understanding and intelligent nation of Iran to turn out massively in Friday's rally in a bid to negate
          any kind of oppression anywhere in the world,” Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, a high-ranking reformist cleric, was
          quoted as saying on his website. “Be sure that God watches out for tyrants.”
          The post-election unrest, the Islamic republic's greatest domestic challenge since the 1979 revolution that
          established clerical rule, has sharply divided Iran's senior clergy.
          Earlier this week Ayatollah Ali Hossein Montazeri delivered a blistering rebuke of the government, labeling it
          a “military regime” and calling on other clerics to speak out against authorities. Hours later officials arrested
          three of his grandchildren for allegedly taking part in nighttime political rallies outside the office of another
          reformist cleric. One of the young men was released Tuesday night.
          A Sunni cleric loyal to Ahmadinejad was shot dead early Sunday morning in the city of Sanandaj, in western
          Iran, where he led Friday prayers. A prosecutor in Sanandaj was shot in the neck this morning in an apparent
          assassination attempt, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Another prosecutor in the mostly
          Kurdish city escaped an assassination attempt a week ago.
          daragahi ( latimes. com
          Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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