Khomeini calls for regime change in Iran

Sunday Telegraph:

The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country's clerical regime.

Hossein Khomeini's call is all the more startling as he made it from Qom, the spiritual home of Iran's Shia strand of Islam, during an interview to mark the 17th anniversary of the ayatollah's death.

"My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. "I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy - but it has persecuted its leaders."

He also made clear his opposition to Teheran's alleged development of a secret nuclear weapons programme. "Iran will gain real power if freedom and democracy develop there," he said. "Strength will not be obtained through weapons and the bomb."

Mr Khomeini, 47, is a Shia cleric, but he believes that the holy men who have run the country since 1979 - to whom he dismissively refers as "wearers of the turban" - abused their power following the overthrow of the Shah.

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Perhaps he needs to go to Paris to gather his followers. There have been several call for regime change with in Iran recently. It looks like will will have to prop up the religious bigots with some dal on their nuke facility.