The Jeffersonian fatwa

Washington Times Editorial:

The spirit of Thomas Jefferson is alive and well and living in Iran. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, one of the most senior Iranian clerics, published a fatwa on July 11 that reads as though he had been perusing the works of America's Founding Fathers. The document is a revolutionary call for action against a government in Tehran that has forfeited its right to rule.

The grand ayatollah believes that government is instituted by man as a social contract, with rights and responsibilities on both the part of the people and the government. "The state belongs to the people," he said. "It is neither my property or yours." Compare this to our Declaration of Independence, which states that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."

This contract is revocable, something that Mr. Montazeri says is grounded in "both religious law and common sense," or as Jefferson said, the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." When the government behaves in a way that contravenes the people's rights, it forfeits its legitimacy and may be dissolved. "In the event of a breach of any article of the contract between the two sides," Mr. Montazeri writes, "namely that between the position holder and the people, who appointed him -- the people may remove the position holder from his post." Or as Jefferson put it in 1776: "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

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There is more. This is a pretty remarkable document to come out of Iran, especially from a religious figure. Whether his ideas will see any fruition in Iran is another question, and it seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is still eager to do business with the bad guys.