A high-ranking Iranian religious leader steps down due to allegations of land appropriation

A high-ranking Iranian religious leader steps down due to allegations of land appropriation

A senior Iranian imam has resigned his interim role leading Tehran’s Friday Prayers, just months after his son and daughter-in-law were arrested on financial corruption charges.

Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi had faced mounting pressure to resign following the arrests of his relatives in early June, as well as a 2024 media investigation alleging that he and his family were involved in a land grab worth approximately $20 million tied to a religious seminary the cleric founded in the Iranian capital.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accepted Sedighi’s resignation on Sunday, thanking the cleric for seventeen years of service. According to an announcement published on the ruler’s official website, Sedighi explained in a letter to Khamenei that he was resigning “to focus on scientific, teaching, and missionary work.”

In June, Sedighi publicly acknowledged the arrest of two of his relatives. “If the law makes a decision about my child, I will obey the law, because I have always considered myself to be a defender of the law,” the cleric said, according to Mizan News Agency, Iran’s judiciary’s official outlet.

On June 10, Iran’s judicial spokesperson Asghar Jahangir told a press conference that Sedighi’s son and daughter-in-law were among six people detained on “financial” charges. 

“Preliminary investigations are underway and we cannot say its dimensions at this time,” Jahangir said, before adding: “The judiciary has no red lines when it comes to fighting corruption.” 

In March 2024, the Iranian journalist Yashar Soltani reported on documents allegedly showing that a religious seminary Kazem Sedighi founded had transferred ownership of an adjoining plot of land to a company connected to the cleric and his family.

In response to the report, Sedighi claimed that the alleged land transfer was a case of “forgery and betrayal of trust,” though he later issued a video apology to the Iranian people for what he described as “negligence” in the seminary’s management.