by the government’s “weak management,” Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli says.
The country is rich in assets while suffering extensive poverty, Javadi-Amoli commented, according to the daily Sharq, becoming the latest in a series of senior clerics to speak up criticizing the way Iran is run.
“We will one day be punished for it,” the ayatollah said, invoking the ultimate fear that the people will turn on the Islamic Republic.
Unemployment and poverty shouldn’t be underestimated, and moral and religious advice can’t be expected to “tame” poor and unemployed young people, Javadi-Amoli told a meeting with politicians.
Javadi-Amoli, 79, also criticized infighting and cliques within the government.
The ayatollah is a conservative and regime loyalist. He was the man Ayatollah Khomeini chose to carry a letter to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.
He was for many years the Friday prayer leader of Qom, but retired in 2009, partly for health reasons and partly, he said, because he didn’t feel that he had much influence in the regime.