Divisions Among Iran's Clerics

CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports on divisions among the ruling clerics in Iran.

There are signs that the ongoing protests against last week's presidential election results may be starting to divide Iran's conservative leadership. Iran's influential parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani on Thursday blamed the Interior Ministry for a bloody crackdown on civilians, including students at Tehran University, after Monday's protests. At least eight people died in the violence.

Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi and his supporters have taken to the streets this week urging the government to dismiss the results that gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. They are calling for a new election. Iran's Interior Ministry is aligned with Ahmadinejad, while Larijani is aligned with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Larijani and Ahmadinejad have had a tense relationship in the past.

Fareed Zakaria, host of GPS (Sundays at 1 pm EDT on CNN), added that while the current regime may hold on to power for some time, its legitimacy among the Iranian people has taken a fatal hit.

The regime's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists had divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea was at its heart. Last week, that ideology suffered a fatal wound.

When the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "divine assessment," he was indicating it was divinely sanctioned. But no one bought it. He was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran's supreme constitutional body, met with the candidates and promised to investigate and perhaps recount some votes. Khamenei has subsequently hardened his position but that is now irrelevant. Something very important has been laid bare in Iran today --- legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular support.

--Ballard Burgher