Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who frequently presides over Tehran’s Friday Prayer and delivers the politically important sermons, and who is believed to be close to the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, today attacked those who stormed and ransacked the British embassy and residence buildings in Tehran, calling the attacks “illegal.”
"I explicitly say that I am against attacking embassies and occupying them," Khatami said. "Attacking an embassy and occupying it is like invading a country and is illegal," he added [ISNA, 4 December].
The comments made by Khatami (no elations to the former Iranian president) were the strongest negative reaction to the attacks on embassy buildings.
Another senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, on Saturday said it was possible that the storming of the embassy had been led by suspicious “elements” who wanted to prompt the backlash against Iran.
There were reports in the Iranian media that protesters were carrying the portrait of IRGC Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Soleimani. Some foreign news sites have also printed a photo reportedly showing a senior Quds Force officer participating in the storming of the embassy.
As I mentioned in previous posts elements within and around the Islamic regime bitterly regret the attack to the British embassy in Tehran which will finish to their cost.
ReplyDeleteThis is a regime patterrn, Instead of taking responsibility and punishing the leadership for a mistake, they try to blame it on phantom, out of control, elements.
ReplyDeleteIn a country where everything is managed tightly by the security opparatous, nothing this big can happen without their knowledge and approval, and in this case, help.
The only interesting part of this conservative clerics comment is that one could infer that the invasion and occupation of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 was also illegal and wrong, and the founder of the Islamic republic,Khomeini, was wrong in supporting it.
We still don't know which group in Iran organized the raid, and why.
ReplyDeleteAnon 3:16 PM
ReplyDeleteThe Khamenei boys Basij or IRGC and QUDS what's the difference ?
They are all cut from the same cloth.
This whole thing appears roughly analogous to public koran burning (or threats of such) in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteCounterproductive in both cases, as well as politicized domestic responses, to what is essentially an emotional;u based urge.
````This whole thing appears roughly analogous to public koran burning (or threats of such) in the U.S.
ReplyDelete``````
no it's not anything near to analogous.
koran copies aren't people taken hostage and the books that were burned were the property of the people doing the burning and not property of some other government.