A popular cleric has resigned as a mosque preacher to protest the increasing influence of hard-liners in the Islamic establishment.
Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri announced his decision in a statement Tuesday, the third anniversary of a hard-liners' raid on a university dormitory that killed one person and set off the worst unrest in decades. The Associated Press obtained a copy of his handwritten statement Wednesday.
Referring to those who took part in the raid as "idiot stick-holding hooligans," Taheri accused hard-liners of paralyzing elected institutions and seeking to justify violence in the name of religion.
Hard-line clerics have used their control over the judiciary, police and other unelected bodies to curb reformist plans to ease social and political restrictions.
Taheri condemned "the increasing power of irresponsible unelected institutions, the undermining of the elected parliament, the distasteful slaughter of the press, the illegal imprisonment of writers, the paralysis of the elected government."
He also denounced the continued house arrest of senior dissident cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who had been groomed as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's successor, but was later denounced for questioning the extent of the clerics' power. The late Khomeini is the father of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Davoud Hermidas Bavand, a Tehran University professor and political analyst, said Taheri's resignation reflected the increasing dissatisfaction of Iranians with the Islamic establishment.
"The statement is an important development. Taheri has done what the public had expected ... Khatami to do," Bavand said. "The public has been expecting ... Khatami either to live up to his promises of reforms and stand up to hard-liners or resign in the same way Taheri did."
Khatami's program of political freedoms and reforms is in tatters. His outspoken allies have been jailed or harassed by the judiciary and more than 50 reformist papers have been silenced.
Facing increasing criticism for failing to stand up to hard-liners, Khatami has said several times that he preferred a slower pace of reforms to avoid unrest