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Clashes at funeral of Iranian dissident cleric

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Iranian reformists have clashed with police after the funeral of a dissident cleric, opposition websites say. Earlier, tens of thousands took part in a procession for Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri in the holy city of Qom. Clashes reportedly broke out, but the scale of the confrontation is not clear, the BBC reports. Montazeri, who died aged 87 of natural causes in Qom on Saturday night, had decried President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June as a fraud. Marco Werman talks with correspondent Borzou Daragahi, who is just back from a visit to Iran.

• BBC coverage
• BBC obituary: Ayatollah Montazeri

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  The funeral of one of Iran’s most influential dissident figures seems to have put new life into opposition protests in the country.  Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri died on Saturday, and tens of thousands of people attended his funeral today in the Holy City of Qom.  Reports from Iran say the security forces clashed with opposition supporters there.  Los Angeles Times reporter Borzou Daraghai is back in Beirut just back from Teheran.  Borzou, what happened in Qom?

BORZOU DARAGHAI: Well today there was a huge number of people according to witnesses and videotape posted through the Internet.  Huge number of people, supporters of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri who descended upon the shrine city from all over the country, many of them his supporters from his home town of Najafabad where you had very rowdy demonstrations yesterday and immediately they took to the streets as the funeral procession began and they chanted very charged political slogans, and they turned this funeral ceremony as they took his black draped body from his humble home they turned it into a loud, boisterous opposition demonstration.  Apparently afterward there was some minor clashes between supporters of the supreme leader, hard right-wing loyalists to the Islamic Republic’s ruling establishment, and supporters of Montazeri.  But according to our understanding these were not the dominant motifs of the day.

MARCO: I mean it’s kind of hard to tweeze apart from here just what kind of a blow this is to the opposition to have the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri die.  I mean, how big a spiritual figure was he for the opposition?

BORZOU: He was a very important figure.  He was considered by many to be the most learned, the most senior cleric in the Iranian Shiite clerical establishment.  And his passing, it delivers a blow.  It takes away some of their clerical legitimacy.  On the other hand, he had said his most radical statements about the Islamic Republic and about the Supreme Leader in recent weeks.  Some people put it, I mean the guy was 87.  He had already made this amazing transformation from one of the architects of the Islamic Republic to one of it’s most strident critics, questioning even the legitimacy of the revolution and in some cases in recent years even basically saying that if he could do it again he wouldn’t have supported this revolution.  And so he has made that transformation, eerily, uncannily, there could have not been a more galvanizing point for him to die.  The religiously significant seventh day after his death will fall on the peak of the Moharam ceremonies in Iran, the Ashora where men pour into the streets and lament the seventh century martyrdom of the Imam Hussein and this has already been planned as an opposition protest and so this must just make the authorities in the Islamic Republic just shiver with fear.

MARCO: I mean you just left Teheran today Borzou, what is the mood right now?

BORZOU: Well among the opposition it’s surprisingly optimistic.  There’s a certain maturity.  People are going about their daily lives during the normal course of their days.  They’re going to work, they’re pursuing their studies.  I talked to many people who were saying that they don’t want to get arrested, they don’t want to get in big trouble because they see this as a potentially years long battle that they’re hunkering down for.

MARCO: Los Angeles Times reporter Borzou Daraghai, thanks very much for your time.

BORZOU: It’s been a pleasure.

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