One of Iran’s most senior clerics issued an unusual decree on Saturday calling the country’s rulers “usurpers and transgressors” for their treatment of opposition protesters in recent weeks. The New York Times reports Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri’s decree marked the strongest condemnation by a religious figure since the contested presidential election a month ago. The eighty-seven-year-old Montazeri was a leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and was once designated the successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.