Posted on 02/17/2008 1:58:56 PM PST by forkinsocket
TEHRAN, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) — An Iranian ayatollah died suddenly of a heart attack during an impassioned speech lashing out at insults against the family of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the run-up to elections, the press reported on Sunday.
Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, a former head of Khomeini's office, died while delivering the speech to Iran's main arbitration body, the Expediency Council, of which he was a member, the Kargozaran daily reported.
He had been responding to unprecedented ultra-conservative attacks against Hassan Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini's respected grandson, who had criticised mass disqualifications in the March election and military interference.
"He was attacking those people with fossilized minds who attack the family and the ideas of the Imam Khomeini when he had a cardiac arrest," Mohammad Hashemi, brother of council head Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, told the paper.
He also quoted a letter from Khomeini from the early days of the revolution denouncing "reactionaries who attack the family and friends of the Imam Khomeini under the pretext of defending him."
"Defending the Imam until the very last moment," lauded the headline of Kargozaran next to a picture of Tavassoli, 77.
The manner of Tavassoli's sudden death underlines the tensions ahead of the March 14 parliamentary election.
Hundreds of reformist candidates have been disqualified in initial vetting while the head of the Revolutionary Guards made a surprise announcement that the elite force favours conservatives in the race.
Hassan Khomeini, who rarely makes comments in public, had bitterly criticised both of these events prompting extraordinary attacks against him by ultra-conservative websites.
In a piece entitled: "The secrets about the rosy cheeks of Seyyed Hassan Khomeini", the Nosazi (Restoration) website made allegations about him owning a BMW car, having a personal steam sauna and living in affluent north Tehran.
This in turn prompted another backlash in the press against the radical websites denouncing Khomeini's family, a taboo in the Islamic republic.
The judiciary subsequently shut down five unnamed internet sites for disturbing public opinion, one of which was believed to be Nosazi which is now impossible to access.
You beat me to it. That was the thread I saw just below this one!
Sounds like a message from God.
Another one bites the dust?
Being full of hate and anger is not good for your health. They should get a life. Start loving their children instead of putting bombs around their waist.
Rove, you magnificent bastard!
Thanks! Lousy weather here in WI today, I needed something to cheer me up. I thought it was a parody at first.
Went to collect his 72 camels.
So if he didn’t die a martyr, does he still collect his virgins even though he just talked trash and had other people die for his BS?
There’s some days I really wish I had a Death Note...
Is that anything like the “brown note”....?
I don’t care who ya are...that’s funny right there!
PLEASE TELL ME HE CHOKED ON A HAM SANDWICH!
Yes, you are right. Tavassoli belonged to the same party as the former President Khatami the Association of Combatant Clerics (sure, a very silly name) i.e. part of the “reformist groups” in Iran. He was strongly against Ahmadinejad.
There are two grandsons of Khomeini: Hassan Khomeini that is the person mentioned in this article, and in this article:
“Cuban President Fidel Castro is accompanied by Hajj Seyed Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, as he leads more than 1.2 million Cubans in the largest anti-U.S. protest in four decades of hostilities, July 26, 2001. The march was billed by the ruling Communist Party as a protest against all U.S. “aggressions and crimes’ since Castro’s 1959 revolution. Khomeini is in Cuba as part of an Iranian delegation visiting on Castro’s invite.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/524670/posts
However, I think that Hassan today has a somewhat different opinion than he had some year ago.
The other grandson is Hossein Komeini http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Khomeini In 2006, on the Al-Arabiya television station, Hossein called for American destruction of the Islamic Republic by invasion.
The election is March 14, and it will be a tough fight between the followers of Ahmadinejad, the conservatives like Hassan Khomeiny and the reformers that nowadays have the super corrupt billionaire Rafsanjani on their side. My bet is on Rafsanjani.
The politics in Iran is a very complicated issue and normal western classifications can not be used. Many crazy mullahs are subscribers of free economy and many reformists are really left wing nuts. We should ask Radio Farda etc to broadcast Milton Freedman's "Free to choose" etc. in Farsi.
Effin psychos. My Ayatollah is better than your Ayatollah because Muhammad was his great great great great uncle. What a mess of loonies
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