Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’ legacy and the mystery surrounding his death ….

Author: Ghazal Omid

December 20, 2009. Iranians witnessed yet another blow to their quest for freedom.  The timing of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s passing could not be more spiritual.  He passed away, reportedly from natural causes, at age 87 during the holiest month of Shiah Islam. The Iranian nation mourns one of its greatest holy figures who fought for justice.

Ironically, Ayatollah Montazeri, who fought for freedom both in the time of the Shah and as a high ranking Mullah ended up in opposition to the Iranian regime he fought to establish. It is not a surprise when an old man dies of old age but those of us who knew and followed him closely, question why there was no autopsy. Why was he denied medical attention and visitation by a doctor to his bedside? 

It is a crime in most countries to deny a doctor to a dying patient but apparently not so in Iran where the leader decides who lives and dies.  Particularly vulnerable was this staunch opponent of the very government of which he was the architect.  

After the sudden death of Montazeri, Ali Khamenei, who wrote letter after letter to Khomeini to make sure Ayatollah Montazeri would never occupy any position of power, publicly expressed his sorrow.  His sorrow, while a politically correct move, is the furthest thing from the messages that Khomeini and other clerics disseminated at the beginning of the revolution when they declared that they are not politicians and would leave Tehran to lead a spiritual life. At the pivotal point of too much power in the hands of clerics in Iran,  Ayatollah Montazeri asked for the separation of religion from power. Overnight, he became the regime’s number one opponent; spending five years in house arrest and the remainder of his life in Qom under the watchful eyes of undercover IRI agents.  

When Ayatollah Montazeri’s political honeymoon started in 1979, he was mocked by his critics for gaffes that haunted him for years. When the newly elected leadership wanted to return the F-14s fighter jets the Shah purchased from the US prior to the revolution, Montazeri questioned, “Why would Iran need such junk metal?” During the subsequent eight year Iran-Iraq war his naivety was mocked. Perhaps he learned more from his mistakes than he ever admitted. 

While under house arrest, Montazeri publicly commented on issues pressuring not only himself but also ordinary Iranians.  Human Rights were the top issue.   

Ironically, one day after his burial at 12 Noon ET December 21, 2009, Iranian TV Channel One from Tehran showed a gathering of students at Tehran University.  The guest lecturer was speaking about the discovery of documents, purportedly from CIA spies and particularly from the US Embassy.  Nearly three decades later, quotations from the documents he was reading caused such a profound reaction by the young audience that at the call for prayers he asked the students to delay their prayers so he could finish his speech.   

He mentioned a series of names, among them the Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who fought courageously and was also denied medical attention when his heart needed urgent attention.  The reader accused Shariatmadari of spying and of being documented and profiled in CIA material as a possible leader to overthrow the regime. He also revealed in these documents, connections within the Iranian community in the United States; including some who supposedly worked for the CIA. One name mentioned was Alireza Nourizadeh, identified as a “former SAVAK member currently working as a political expert with VOA and a Los Angeles TV station.” At least part of the lecturer’s message is correct.  Mr. Nourizadeh does work for the VOA and Channel One in L.A for the Ma Hastim movement.  The detailed account of the document was stunning, especially because Mr. Nourizadeh is not shy about boasting, both privately and publicly, of his connections with high ranking members in Iran. He is critical of the Iranian regime, but expresses respect for many current members of the regime and relates facts about them so vividly it is as if he himself sat in the meetings.  It would, however, be a tenuous assumption to think he was a SAVAK member; unless SAVAK still exists within the current regime as the mafia of the Sepah Pasdaran, which is widely accepted as having the second best Intelligence in the world next to MOSSAD.  It is widely known that after dissolving SAVAK, Rafsanjani reassembled the elements of SAVAK willing to work with the current regime and called it SAVAMA.

In the end, the death of an icon was not so unpredictable in a country that only requires two men or four women to stand as witness for an alleged crime and enable “justice” to be rendered without criminal investigation, autopsy or lawyer for the defense.     

Ayatollah Montazeri posthumously joins other high ranking Ayatollahs who fought both for and against this regime.  They are: Grand Ayatollah Shamasabadi, killed by Mullah Mehid Hashemi, Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and Ayatollah Talegani who both died suddenly and mysteriously. The only remaining opposition among high ranking mullahs is the Ayatollah Sayed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi, presently in solitary confinement in Evin Prison, grandson of Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi, who refused to join in the subterfuge to save the life of Khomeini by making him a Grand Ayatollah.