Funeral of Iranian Opposition Cleric Turns Into A Mass Anti-Regime Rally

Gotta love it. The Iranian regime tried to put all of the brakes on any kind of reporting of today's funeral for Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was one of the country's top spiritual leaders and also, a resounding figurehead of the opposition movement but reports have gotten out from the country and it appears that this funeral turned into a mass rally of dissent against the current Iranian regime.

From the article at Times Online:

Iran's opposition turned this morning's funeral of their spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, into another huge demonstration against the government, with tens or hundreds of thousands of protesters descending on the holy city of Qom.
The regime did its best to suppress news of the funeral, banning foreign reporters from the city and imposing strict curbs on what the state-controlled domestic media could report. The BBC said its Persian television signal was being jammed. Internet connections were slowed to a crawl.
But reports filtering out of Qom said Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the political leaders of the so-called Green movement, joined a vast throng of mourners who chanted "Dictator - Montazeri's way will continue" and "Montazeri is not dead. It is the government which is dead." Many wore green.
Security forces were out in strength, and there were reports of clashes as hardliners tried to stop the chanting and disrupt the ceremony.

I've said it before here when the riots and protests were really at a peak in Iran a few months ago after the election but it's probably just as poignant now...that the West has absolutely booted the best chance EVER to see that the nefarious regime of Ayatollah Khomeini be undermined and quite possibly, overthrown. I mean really...the dissent, the protests, the outrage is STILL going on in Iran...and yet, the Obama administration did NOTHING to try and turn the tides in the country. Can you imagine what a coordinated effort by the CIA could have done in Iran over the past few months? Think about it...think about how easily the power could have been tipped in this country that is now in a position to start World War 3. We could have seen the mullahs, Ahmadinejad ousted without firing a single shot, without a bombing mission - subversion would have gotten it done but oh no...Barack Hussein Obama actually worked to SAVE the current regime. He lifted not one finger in the whole process.

Some might say that the people of the United States of America lost a chance at being more safe and secure and they lost that chance because of their President. And if you don't think a plan for overthrow wasn't presented to Obama by the CIA, you're out to lunch.

Iranian opposition turns funeral of cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri into mass rally

Iran's opposition turned this morning's funeral of their spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, into another huge demonstration against the government, with tens or hundreds of thousands of protesters descending on the holy city of Qom.
The regime did its best to suppress news of the funeral, banning foreign reporters from the city and imposing strict curbs on what the state-controlled domestic media could report. The BBC said its Persian television signal was being jammed. Internet connections were slowed to a crawl.
But reports filtering out of Qom said Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the political leaders of the so-called Green movement, joined a vast throng of mourners who chanted "Dictator - Montazeri's way will continue" and "Montazeri is not dead. It is the government which is dead." Many wore green.
Security forces were out in strength, and there were reports of clashes as hardliners tried to stop the chanting and disrupt the ceremony.

The funeral sets the scene for what promises to be a highly-charged week in Iran as the sacred month of Muharram reaches its climax next Sunday with the holiday of Ashura when Shias mourn the seventh-century martyrdom of Prophet Mohammed's grandson.
The opposition is planning another huge demonstration on that day, which will now coincide with the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri - an important date in the Shia mourning ritual.
Six months after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won what the opposition insists was a fraudulent election, and despite half-a-year of brutal suppression, the Green movement is showing signs of renewed vigour and the death of Montazeri could galvanise it further.
Montazeri, 87, died in his sleep and was buried in the shrine of Masoumeh, a revered Shiite figure, in Qom.
He was a pillar of the 1979 Iranian revolution and the designated successor of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini until he began criticising Iran's human rights record and fell out of favour.
Since June's hotly-disputed election he had been one of the regime's most powerful and outspoken critics, using his authority as the leading Shia theologian in Iran to argue that it had no political or religious legitimacy and condemning its use of violence, torture and forced confessions. He said Iran was no longer Islamic or a republic.
The regime ordered newspapers in Tehran not to print front-page photographs of Montazeri or carry condolence messages, but Mr Mousavi and Mr Karoubi declared today a national day of mourning.
Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, said Montazeri had "spent many years of his honourable life on the path of advancing the high goals of Islam and the Islamic revolution". Shirin Ebadi, the human rights activist and Nobel prize laureate, called Montazeri "the father of human rights in Iran".