Dec. 21: Updates on Dissident Cleric’s Funeral in Iran

To supplement reporting by our colleague Robert Worth on events in Iran on Monday — where a funeral for one of Shiite Islam’s most senior clerics who was also a leading dissident, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, reportedly drew a huge crowd of opposition supporters into the streets of the city of Qum — The Lede is following news and discussion online. Readers who know of firsthand accounts from inside Iran are encouraged to share them with us. Either post links to text, video or photographs in the comment thread below, or by write to us at lede@nytimes.com.

Update | 10:10 p.m. The Iranian blogger Mojtaba Samienejad points to this video, apparently shot on Monday in Qum, giving some sense of the size and intensity of the crowd at the funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri:

This video report from The Associated Press includes images of the funeral shown on state television in Iran, which, according to the news agency, were transmitted without sound:

The Lede will continue to follow the response to the death of Ayatollah Montazeri in the days ahead. Thanks for all your comments and help.

Update | 3:36 p.m. According to an opposition Web site, the Montazeri family told BBC Persian that they had to cancel a funeral reception due to the presence of security forces and “martial-law-like conditions” around the family home in Qum. This photograph of the security forces around the home of Ayatollah Montazeri in Qum on Monday was published on an opposition Web site:

Update | 2:43 p.m. It is after 11 p.m. in Iran now. About an hour ago, the Iranian-American Web site Tehran Bureau reported on Twitter that the opposition ritual of protesting by shouting the slogan “God is great,” borrowed from the revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979, was particularly intense on Monday night. Tehran Bureau wrote:

Source in Tehran: “People have gone crazy chanting Allah o Akbar from rooftops.”

One of our readers also writes to point to another parallel to that revolution:

One point I would like to make about today’s protests that I have not seen discussed in the media was its location: Qom is in many ways the heart of the last Revolution (how it ended up anyway) and its aftermath. Until now, the regime has tried very very hard to isolate Qom from the protest movement. The security presence there has always been reported as very high to prevent any protests. [...] With today’s protests in Qom, and the clergy’s close-up view of it (perhaps for the first time for some of them) it will be interesting to see what the Qom clergy does in the days and weeks to come.

Update | 2:38 p.m. Here is more video of Mehdi Karroubi, the reformist cleric who ran for president in June’s disputed election, apparently filmed at the funeral in Qum on Monday:

Update | 2:31 p.m. My colleague Nazila Fathi adds some annotation to a video embedded in our 8:38 a.m. update. In the second video there, she explains, after a statement from the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was read at the funeral in Qum, people in the crowd booed and chanted “Death to the dictator.”

Update | 2:23 p.m. My colleague Nazila Fathi notes that this chant, “we do not want rationed condolences,” also apparently recorded on Monday in Qum, contains more criticism of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — this time for his rather perfunctory note of condolence in response to the death of Ayatollah Montazeri:

Here, from the Mehr News agency, is the text of the supreme leader’s brief statement on the death of Ayatollah Montazeri — which contains a reference to his rift with Ayatollah Khomeini (the “difficult test” he was faced with):

We have become informed that the sublime jurisprudent Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri has departed this life. He was a competent religious authority and a prominent expert and many students attended his classes. A long portion of his life had been dedicated to the movement of the revered and great Imam (Khomeini), and he strived and suffered hardships on this path. In the last years of the Imam’s life, he (Montazeri) was faced with a difficult test. I ask Almighty God to forgive him through His mercy and to accept the hardships suffered during his life as atonement. I extend my condolences to his bereaved wife and children and ask God to bestow forgiveness and mercy upon him.

Update | 2:18 p.m. The Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad draws our attention to this video clip, apparently shot as the crowd addressed a large mural of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on a wall in Qum on Monday, saying: “Dictator, shame on you; Montazeri, may your spirit rest in happiness.”

Update | 2:11 p.m. A brief alert from Reuters on Twitter picks up on a report Iranian bloggers have been discussing. The Reuters Flash reads: “Car of Iran opposition leader Moussavi attacked on way from Qom, member of his entourage injured – reformist website.”

My colleague Nazila Fathi writes to say that the opposition Web site Rahesabz reported that Mir Hussein Moussavi’s convoy was attacked and one of his bodyguards was injured. According to the Web site, a group of Basiji militia members followed Mr. Moussavi’s convoy in Qum on motorcycles and blocked it several times. At one point, they attacked Mr. Moussavi’s car and smashed the rear window which injured one of his bodyguards. Mr. Moussavi was not hurt. The leader of the group was also injured after one the bodyguards confronted them.

Earlier today, The Guardian noted, “Reformist websites reported that the road between Tehran and Qom was clogged with motorists heading to the funeral.”

Update | 1:51 p.m. In a statement published on the Web on Monday, the BBC’s press office said that efforts to keep the corporation’s Persian-language news broadcasts from reaching Iran have been stepped up in recent days. According to the statement:

BBC Persian television is continuing to broadcast into Iran despite attempts to jam the station’s signal. The persistent interference began soon after BBC Persian began extended coverage of the death of leading reformist cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri.

This includes the first airing of an exclusive interview with the grand ayatollah which was filmed before his death. The senior cleric, who had not been seen on Iranian television screens for 20 years, was one of Shia Islam’s most respected figures and a leading critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [...]

In June this year, BBC Persian television suffered similar deliberate attempts to interfere with its signal when airing extended coverage of the Iranian elections. At that time, the satellite operator traced the interference and confirmed it was coming from inside Iran.

Update | 1:32 p.m. As my colleague Robert Worth reports, the timing of Ayatollah Montazeri’s death may prove to be a headache for the country’s government, since a mourning ceremony for him next week will take place on a very important day in the Shiite calender:

Large opposition protests are planned next Sunday on the religious holiday of Ashura. That will coincide with the seventh day after Ayatollah Montazeri’s death, an important marker in Shiite mourning rituals and one that could amplify the day’s potential for confrontation.

Robert Tait and Matthew Weaver of The Guardian explain that the Ashura ceremony commemorates “the martyrdom at Karbala of Hossein, Shia Islam’s third imam, who is regarded as a symbol of struggle against oppressive rule.” Mr. Tait and Mr. Weaver add, “The ceremony has a central place in Iran’s revolutionary folklore. Ashura demonstrations against the shah in 1978 are widely thought to have played a pivotal role in toppling the former monarch’s regime.”

Update | 1:08 p.m. This video appears to show Mehdi Karroubi, the opposition’s most outspoken leader, arriving to pay his respects to the late Ayatollah Montazeri in Qum. The blogger Mehdi Saharkhiz says this video was shot on Monday, but it appears to show the same visit the official Mehr News agency said in a photo caption took place on Sunday:

As The Lede noted on Friday, last week Mr. Karroubi — who was, like Ayatollah Montazeri, involved in the revolution that toppled the government of the last Shah of Iran — gave an interview to the BBC in which he said that “the government has only been kept in power by force,” since June’s disputed election.

Update | 12:52 p.m. Another reader writes to help us annotate one of the videos we embedded earlier. The same reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, writes that the slogan chanted in the clip in our 11:41 a.m. update uses the word “rahbar” for Ayatollah Montazeri, which is “the Farsi title of the head of the Islamic Republic, i.e. the ‘Supreme Leader.’ It’s probably meant as an insult at Khamenei.”

The same reader suggests that the contrast between today’s massive funeral and last week’s government-orchestrated rally in Tehran may be important:

It is illuminating to compare the large turnout today (on short notice, in a city located a good distance from Tehran, and despite the threat of government violence) with the anemic turnout to support the government after Friday Prayers last week, despite the full organizational and monetary support of the government.

As an Iranian, this foretells the end of the long dominance of hardliners in Iranian politics. Since the beginning, the hardliners have lacked widespread popular support, but have always had the most fervent supporters. In the early days of the revolution, it was the mob-like chomaq-dors (basically hardline mobs armed with wooden sticks) and ansar-e-hezbollah, and in recent times, the more organized basiji, that crack heads if necessary. These groups were supported by a broader coalition of religious/traditional Iranians who opposed the more moderate (and popular) voices that have consistently sprung up after the Revolution, such as Ayatollah Taleghani, Mohammed Khatami, etc. The hardliners supporters were much more fervent and organized than anyone else, and the opposition to them was split a thousand different ways.

Now, it appears the opposition has not only more in numbers, but, also more fervor (judging by street presence) and unity.

Update | 12:15 p.m. In 2004 my colleague Nicholas Kristof traveled to Iran and filed a multimedia report called “Six Questions for Iran,” which included part of an interview he conducted with Ayatollah Montazeri in Qum.

To view the interview, either open the multimedia feature and click on the image of Ayatollah Montazeri above the first question, “Was the Islamic Revolution a Mistake?” or watch the excerpt from it now embedded at the left side of this post.

In the interview, Ayatollah Montazeri told Mr. Kristof, five years before this year’s election:

The full freedom in which all people participate in a democratic process has not been achieved. If the demands that the people made at the time of the revolution are not achieved, then it is possible that people will start shouting those demands again. Since the trend in the world today is not one of force and imposing thing on people, you cannot force people to have religion. Either officials change their methods and give freedom to the people and stop fixing the elections or the people will rise up once again in revolution.

Video of Mr. Kristof’s complete interview with Ayatollah Montazeri is also available on our Web site, but it may take a little while to download since it was published before the site switched to our current video system.

The complete multimedia report, produced by Naka Nathaniel, is also well worth watching. It was made during a visit that took place during the last year of the former president Mohammed Khatami’s term, before the election that first brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, amidst more muted claims of fraud.

Persian-speakers can also view video of another interview with Ayatollah Montazeri, which the Web site Payvand says was conducted by Radio Zamaneh in early 2009. In that interview, Ayatollah Montazeri discussed the decision he made in the 1980s to speak out against executions ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini, which is what led to a rift between the two men, and the decision to remove him as Khomeini’s designated successor.

Given his strong support for the reformists over the past decade, it seems clear that the Islamic Republic might have been a very different place today had Ayatollah Montazeri been the country’s supreme leader for the past two decades instead of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Update | 11:51 a.m. This brief YouTube clip was uploaded on Monday by an anonymous video blogger who says that it shows Hadi Khamenei, the supreme leader’s younger brother at the funeral in Qum. Mr. Khamenei (who wears a black turban) is also one of his brother’s critics and a leader of the reformist Association of Combatant Clerics.

A photograph of Mr. Khamenei published by The Tehran Times in June seems to confirm that he is the man in this video. According to that report from the English-language Tehran newspaper, five days after the disputed June 12 presidential election Mr. Khamenei “suggested that an impartial committee should be formed to examine the election results and the complaints.”

Earlier this month, as The Associated Press reported, “authorities shut down an opposition daily, Hayat-e No, which is run by a brother of the supreme leader, Hadi Khamenei, who has been in the pro-reform camp for years.”

Update | 11:41 a.m. Another video added to the YouTube channel of the Iranian blogger Mehdi Saharkhiz appears to show the crowd in Qum earlier on Monday quite close to the dissident cleric’s casket:

In this clip some green ribbons — an opposition symbol — are visible, as are several other cameras, including at least one phone, capturing video of the scene.

Later: Thanks to the reader who wrote to explain that the chant heard in this clip — “aza, azast emrooz, rooze azast emrooz, rahbar sabz iran pish khodast emrooz” — means, “mourning, there’s mourning, there’s mourning today; today is the day of mourning, the leader of Green Iran is with God today.” The reader explains, “While Montazeri was not considered the leader of the Green Movement, this points to him as the spiritual head of the Greens.”

Update | 11:12 a.m. A reader writes to help us annotate two of the video clips we embedded in earlier updates. He writes that the first clip in our 10:12 a.m update includes the chant “tuye in hame hayahoo, reasaneye meli ko,” which means, “in this tumult, where is the national press coverage?” The reader says this is in response to government-run news organizations in Iran that either do not cover protests or “give false coverage” of them.

In the third clip embedded in our 9:11 a.m. update, the reader explains that the crowd chants (beginning at about the 1:20 mark), “Montazeri, Montazeri, azadiat mobarak,” which means, “Montazeri, Montazeri, congratulations on your freedom.” The reader suggests that this chant points to both “freedom through death after Montazeri’s years of house arrest, and also the lack of freedom of the people, who can only attain it upon death.”

Update | 10:53 a.m. The official Mehr news agency published photographs showing leaders of Iran’s opposition among those paying their respects to the late Ayatollah Montazeri in Qum on Sunday night.

An Iraqi Web site published this photograph, apparently showing the two men together in Qum on Monday:

Update | 10:40 a.m. Iranian bloggers have also uploaded several videos that they say were shot on Monday during a mourning rally in the ayatollah’s hometown, Najafabad. My colleague Nazila Fathi says that in this clip opposition supporters chant “Montazeri, we will follow your path until the Mahdi’s revolution,” and “Basiji, know that you are murderers.”

Update | 10:34 a.m. My colleague Nazila Fathi explains that in this video, apparently shot during the funeral in Qum on Monday, the crowd chants that it will not be intimidated by members of the government’s Basij militia — “Canons, tanks, Basiji don’t work any more” — and declares that the opposition’s goals are, “independence, freedom” and an “Iranian republic.”

Update | 10:12 a.m. The PBS Web site Tehran Bureau, produced by Iranian-American journalists, points to several more video clips posted on YouTube on Monday that appear to show opposition supporters in the crowd at Ayatollah Montazeri’s funeral on Monday in Qum, chanting antigovernment slogans.

Among the chants in this clip is “Marg bar dictator” (Persian for “Death to the dictator”):

According to Tehran Bureau, in this clip the crowd’s chant suggests that a recent event in the country was a dirty trick staged by the government. After student protests on December 7, state television broadcast images of a photograph of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini which it said had been destroyed by opposition supporters. Tehran Bureau reports that in this clip, “Amidst chants of ‘Ya Hussein, Mir Hussein,’ the protesters say, ‘The one who cheated [during the election] tore up the posters [of Ayatollah Khomeini].’”

Update | 9:26 a.m. This video report from Al Jazeera, posted on YouTube on Sunday, is a useful summary of the role Ayatollah Montazeri played in Iran before his death:

Early on Sunday, the PBS Web site Tehran Bureau published this overview of his life and career by Muhammad Sahimi, an Iranian-American in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sahimi points out that Ayatollah Montazeri, who was originally Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s designated successor as the country’s supreme leader, was fiercely critical of the man who eventually took on that role instead of him, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr. Sahimi notes:

After Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in a famous speech criticized Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and declared him unqualified for the position. He advised Khatami to tell Khamenei, “You and your office are respected, but I was elected with 20 million votes and, therefore, I should be allowed to run the country.” That prompted the hardliners to put him under house arrest, confiscate many of his properties, freeze his bank account, and subject him to ongoing pressure.

The inability of the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, despite two landslide election victories in 1997 and 2001, to wrest power away from the country’s unelected religious leadership helped to build some of the frustration that has fueled this year’s protests over the disputed June presidential election.

Mr. Sahimi also noted that after the June election, “Grand Ayatollah Montazeri came down strongly on the side of the reformist-democratic groups.” He issued a statement rejecting the results of the election which said:

Over the last several days I have been witnessing the glowing presence and the lively and sacrificial efforts of my dear and dignified sisters and brothers, old and young, in the campaign for the 10th presidential election. Our youth also demonstrated their presence on the political scene with hope and good spirit, in order to achieve their rightful demands. They waited patiently night and day. This was an excellent occasion for government officials to take advantage of and establish religious, emotional and nationalistic bonds with our youth and the rest of our people.

Unfortunately, however, this opportunity was wasted in the worst possible way. Such election results were declared that no wise person in their right mind could believe, results that based on credible evidence and witnesses had been altered extensively, and after strong protests by the people against such acts — the same people who have carried the heavy weight and burden of the Revolution during eight years of war and resisted the tanks of the imperial government [of the Shah] and those of the enemy [Iraq] — they attacked the children of the same people and nation right in front of national and foreign reporters, and used astonishing violence against defenseless men and women and the dear [university] students, injuring and arresting them. And now they are trying to purge activists, intellectuals, and political opponents by arresting a large number of them, some of whom have even held high positions in the government of the Islamic Republic.

Mr. Sahimi also wrote:

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri defended the rights of religious minorities. He saved the lives of several people who had converted to Christianity, when he issued a fatwa saying that, “If someone leaves Islam as a result of his own investigation and research, there should not be any problem for him.” He defended the rights of Iranian Baha’is, a religion not recognized by Islam. He said that although Islam does not recognize Bahaism, “our Bahari compatriots are entitled to full citizen rights, like any other Iranian.”

Update | 9:11 a.m. Here is more of what appears to be ground-level amateur video of the crowd at the funeral in Qum earlier on Monday, from the YouTube channel of the blogger Mehdi Saharkhiz — in the first clip, the cleric’s coffin seems to be visible atop a car:

In the second clip, my colleague Nazila Fathi explains that the crowd chants: “Dictator, shame on you, leave the country alone.”

Update | 8:56 a.m. The Iranian blogger Mehdi Saharkhiz also uploaded this video, which he said was shot shot in Sunday in Qum, of mourners around the body of Ayatollah Montazeri:

Update | 8:49 a.m. The BBC reports that there may have been some violence following the funeral, noting: “Opposition Web site Kaleme.org said that following the funeral, some mourners threw stones at police surrounding the grand ayatollah’s house and clashes with security forces followed.” Kaleme also published photographs of the funeral, including one that appears to show opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi in attendance and another that shows the crowd holding pictures of Ayatollah Montazeri along with green ribbons that have come to symbolize the opposition movement.

Britain’s Channel 4 News adds: “The website Kaleme has said that crowds carrying ‘green symbols’ chanted: ‘Today is the day of mourning and the green Iranian nation is the owner of this mourning,’ referring to the color adopted by the opposition.”

Update | 8:38 a.m. Since reporters from foreign media organizations were barred from attending the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri on Monday in Qum, we have to rely on a mix of reports from Iran’s state media and opposition Web sites to piece together a sense of how large the crowd was there.

As my colleague Robert Worth noted, Reuters, citing the reformist Web site Jaras, “said hundreds of thousands of people joined a procession for Montazeri, an architect of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. He later became a fierce critic of its present hardline leadership.” Reuters also reported the opposition supporters in the crowd chanted antigovernment slogans, including: “Innocent Montazeri, your path will be continued even if the dictator should rain bullets on our heads.”

A large crowd could also be seen in images broadcast by Iranian state television and in photographs from official Iranian news agencies. As The Los Angeles Times reported, it was impossible for government-controlled news organizations to ignore the death of such a prominent religious leader, but his role as a critic of the Islamic Republic — which he had helped to found but said this year was no longer Islamic or a republic — meant that the funeral was more important to the country’s unofficial online press:

State-controlled television carried minimal coverage of his death while reformist websites inundated the Internet with photographs of mourning ceremonies, minute-by-minute developments and remembrances.

Iranian bloggers outside the country, working with material apparently coming from the city of Qum, posted video of the vast crowd at the funeral on YouTube. Embedded below are two ground-level views of parts of the crowd chanting opposition slogans from the YouTube channel of Mehdi Saharkhiz, a blogger whose father is a reformist politician in Iran. In the first clip, reportedely shot in Qum on Monday, the crowd chants the refrain “Ya Hussein, Mir Hussein!” which ties together the names of a Shiite Islam martyr and the opposition politician Mir Hussein Moussavi:

As Reuters explains:

Their cries echoed traditional Ashura laments for Hossein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, killed in a 7th-century battle that sealed the schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Ashura, a key occasion in the Islamic Republic’s calendar, will coincide with the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri, making it harder for authorities to keep people off the streets.

“Death to the Dictator!” is among the chants in this second clip, also apparently filmed in Qum on Monday:

According to the Iranian-American Web site Tehran Bureau, now associated with PBS, other chants in this video include direct criticism of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Kkamenei — “Khamenei is a murderer, his rule is null and void” — and of the country’s official media — “Our shame, our Seda o Sima [state television].”