Iran’s influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, on Friday hailed the Shi’ite Muslim militia of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as "heroic" for rising up against the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran that a distinction should be drawn between Shi’ite fighters, who have battled U.S.-led troops across southern Iraq this week, and insurrectionist supporters of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party he described as "terrorists."
"Contrary to these terrorist groups in Iraq, there are powerful bodies which contribute to the security of that nation...among them is the Mehdi Army, made up of enthusiastic, heroic young people," he told the crowd. But Iran’s top dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, criticized the Medhi Army, which follow Sadr. Sadr met Rafsanjani in Iran last June at a memorial service for the spiritual father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Rafsanjani, a mid-ranking cleric, now heads a powerful arbitration body called the Expediency Council, which can have a final say over legislation. In remarks broadcast live on state radio, Rafsanjani also praised the Badr Corps, a Shi’ite fighting force of several thousand nurtured in Iran. The Corps is the fighting wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq that for many years directed its opposition to Saddam from Tehran. The United States has accused Iran, which is also predominantly Shi’ite, of fomenting anti-U.S. sentiment among Iraq’s Shi’ite majority.
But in the seminary city of Qom, Iran’s main seat of religious learning, dissident cleric Montazeri dismissed Sadr’s Mehdi Army. "Although the supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr have chosen the name Mehdi Army for themselves, Imam Mehdi would never be content to initiate disunity, division and factionalism in his name," he said in comments faxed to Reuters. Montazeri’s office said the remarks were made in an interview with Time magazine. Imam Mehdi was the 12th of the Shi’ite Imams, descendants of the prophet Mohammad. Shi’ites await Imam Mehdi’s second coming after he disappeared in the Iraqi city of Samarra in the ninth century. Montazeri threw his weight behind Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who has called on the Iraqi people to support state institutions and public order. "It is rational that under Ayatollah Sistani’s direction and through a union of Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds who are all Muslims, a stable government be established in Iraq," he said. Montazeri, one of the very few clerics to become a grand ayatollah, was once primed to succeed Khomeini as supreme leader of Iran. Khomeini called him "the fruit of my life." But Montazeri was sidelined in 1988 for criticising the treatment of political prisoners and placed under house arrest in 1997 for questioning the religious credentials of Khomeini’s successor and current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Montazeri was freed last year. |