Edited for length:
Iran has made a rare conciliatory gesture towards the United States by endorsing the U.S. statement that coalition forces had not damaged the Shiite religion's two holiest shrines in Iraq. Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency carried a telephone interview on Tuesday with a prominent Shiite cleric who said the shrines were "untouched." The Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala have the mausoleums of the first and the third imams of the Shiite Muslims. Any damage to these shrines could inflame emotions across the Islamic world as Islam's majority Sunni sect also regards the two imams as holy, one of whom -- Ali -- was the son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed and the other -- Hussain -- his grandson. Since Iran is so far the world's only Shiite state, Iran's endorsement of the U.S. claim would go a long way in pacifying the Shiites, particularly in Iraq where the Shiites are a majority. Observers say that if Iran wanted, it could have turned up the heat on the Americans by endorsing a counter-claim by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf who said last Wednesday that coalition forces were trying to destroy the two mausoleums. Instead, the official news agency ran an interview with a prominent Shiite cleric, Seyyed Abdelmajid al-Khoei who said: " This claim that holy sites have been damaged is not true at all."
I posted his statement in full yesterday. This seems to confirm that it was cleared by the Iranian government. |