NCRI – Subsequent to the escalation of the Iranian people’s nationwide uprising on July 9, 2009, Mr. Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Ruhollah Khomeini's former designated successor, issued a fatwa (religious edict) on July 10. While not mentioning the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei by name, Mr. Montazeri called for his dismissal as the Supreme Leader, citing a lack of justice, trustworthiness and the vote of a majority of the Iranian people. These, he said, are necessarily cause for the indisputable and inevitable fall of Khamenei from his position as the Supreme Leader. Montazeri described Khamenei as an "oppressor" and his rule “oppressive.”
For ten years (1979-1989), Montazeri was Khomeini's successor. He was dismissed in March 1989 by Khomeini himself for protesting against the massacre of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). Based on Khomeini’s decree, some 30,000 political prisoners, the vast majority of them members or supporters of the PMOI, were massacred in the span of a few weeks in the summer of 1988.
In a statement broadcast by Iran National Television (Simay-e Azadi), the Iranian Resistance's Leader, Massoud Rajavi, said Ayatollah Montazeri’s fatwa to dismiss Khamenei as Supreme Leader was worthy of praise. Mr. Rajavi added that Montazeri's dismissal by Khomeini because of his protests against the massacre of PMOI political prisoners constituted his greatest political and spiritual capital.
Mr. Rajavi added that it is time Mr. Montazeri, 87, reveals the entire truth to the Iranian people for the sake of his own salvation now and in the afterlife. That truth, Mr. Rajavi said, is none other than acknowledging that the rule of the velayat-e faqih (absolute supremacy of clerical rule) was established by usurping the right of the Iranian people to sovereignty and that the anti-Monarchic revolution was stolen under the cloak of the velayat-e faqih.
Mr. Rajavi underscored that just as the Monarchic dictatorship was doomed to fall, the mullahs' religious dictatorship, which Mr. Montazeri himself has acknowledged, has surpassed the Shah's SAVAK in torturing, slaughtering and perpetrating crimes against the Iranian people, is also doomed to fall and deserves eternal damnation.
Mr. Rajavi expressed hope that Mr. Montazeri would shed any fear of Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and in doing so pay his debt to Iran, Islam and especially the Shiite Imams. He wished Mr. Montazeri health, success and long life to carry out this mandate.