Word: khamenei
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has been under house arrest since 1997 for questioning velayat-e-faqih, the absolute authority of the clergy. In an explosive article, a young cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, even criticized the royalist tendencies of the clerics and their treatment of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei as a shah. Hard-liners feel particularly threatened, explains newspaper commentator Akbar Gangi, because the reformers have impeccable revolutionary credentials too and thus cannot be lightly dismissed or called traitors. Says Gangi: "We have a saying in Persian, 'Only stone can break stone...
Being the patron and publisher of such notions has made Nouri one of the most popular politicians in Iran--and has led to expectations that the reformists may wrest control of the Majlis from hard-line conservatives allied with Ayatullah Khamenei. The prospect of getting shut out of power, maybe for good, frightens the conservatives. Lawmakers have ignored Khatami's proposals to make elections fairer by eliminating a candidate-screening procedure, and are pushing to tighten press restrictions. Besides shutting down newspapers and jailing editors, the courts have imprisoned Khatami supporters on corruption charges...
...reaction was immediate. The next day, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, spiritual leader of Iran, called Arafat a "traitor" and a Zionist "lackey." Hassan Nasrallah, spiritual leader of Hizballah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, followed suit, suggesting that Palestinians assassinate Arafat, just as Egyptian radicals had killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In a leaflet faxed to reporters, the military wing of Hamas, breaking with its practice of eschewing internecine violence, accused Arafat of treason and warned that its activists, if pushed, might "direct their war and guns, out of necessity," against the Palestinian Authority...
...coercive attempt to force its members' conversion to Islam. This policy became widely known in 1993 when it was accidentally revealed that the Iranian Supreme Revolutionary Council had earlier adopted a position on "The Baha'i Question" in a secret document dated Feb. 25, 1991, and signed by Ayatollah Khamenei. The secret document declared that Baha'is must be expelled from universities, denied employment and their "cultural roots" outside Iran destroyed. (The 100,000 American Baha'is received special mention, as did Brazil, Canada and Germany...
...hard-line factions in Iran. The first suggestion that this chapter was closing came last week in New York City, when Iran's moderate President Mohammed Khatami told reporters that the Rushdie affair was "completely finished." On Thursday, Iranian TV, which is controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, reported on the news from New York City factually and without editorial comment, signaling its acquiescence to the decision. The next day, national prayers, which are broadcast countrywide, were led by Ayatullah Mohammed Yazdi, the judiciary head who is close to Khamenei. He referred to Khatami's visit...