Montazeri’s son calls on Iranian president to resign

Iran’s rulers must compromise with opposition figures to avoid a worsening of the political turmoil, the son of the late dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said in comments released on Saturday.

In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, Said Montazeri said he hoped Iran’s rulers would come to their senses and called on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to resign.

“Things can’t go on for long like this,” Montazeri was quoted as saying in an interview conducted by mobile phone from his home in Qom. It was unclear when the interview took place.

“I think the future structure of our society is not so important. It could be an Islamic Republic, a secular republic, or as far as I am concerned, even a monarchy. The main thing is that people can live in freedom and in prosperity,” he said. Anti-government protests have flared repeatedly since a disputed presidential election last June, throwing Iran into its most serious internal crisis in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history. Reuters