Anti-Western Cleric Elected Iran Speaker

Iran’s Parliament showed its radical bent Wednesday by electing a fiercely anti-Western cleric to the powerful post of speaker.

The Iranian news agency IRNA, in a report monitored in Nicosia, said Mehdi Karrubi, 52, was chosen over moderate Ali Akbar Nategh-Noori by a 147-92 vote.

He will succeed Hashemi Rafsanjani, regarded as a centrist, who is to be sworn in as president today. Rafsanjani reportedly backed Nategh-Noori.

Karrubi’s election had been expected because of the balance of forces in the single-chamber Majlis, where hard-liners favoring a militant foreign policy strengthened their hold in April, 1988, elections.

Rafsanjani, 54, who won last month’s presidential election by a landslide, will be responsible to the Majlis, which sets the outlines of domestic and foreign policies and has the right to impeach the president andministers.

However, Karrubi’s election is viewed as unlikely to affect Iran’s stance on many key issues, such as the fate of Western hostages held by pro-Iranian militants in Lebanon. Such issues traditionally have been decided by a handful of top leaders in Iran.

Karrubi, who was deputy speaker of the Majlis for several years, led anti-Western demonstrations in Mecca during the annual hajj pilgrimage in 1987. Clashes with Saudi security forces resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people, most of them Iranians. Karrubi later blamed the deaths on “a calculated plot designed by American and Israeli advisers.”