Prominent cleric and prayer leader of Isfahan, Jalaledine Taheri, has resigned over the "chaotic situation" in the country, the reformist Nourooz paper reported Wednesday. Ayatollah Taheri, who said he cannot "tolerate the chaos any more" and the "generalised corruption at all levels" of religious power in Iran, also expressed his support for dissident cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri, the disgraced former successor of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. The cleric, whose letter was published in Wednesday's reformist press, justified his resignation by listing "deception, unemployment, inflation, the daily rising of prices, the diabolic gap between the rich and poor, bribery, the cheating, the growing drug consumption, the incompetence of authorities and the failure of the political structure" of the regime as the reason for stepping down.
Other than that, things are fine. Taheri's actually been chased off the podium by hard-liner bully boys... |