Iranian Leader Weighs In on Assembly Ed Bill

June 16, 2009 (GBN News): Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader of Iran, took time out from his country’s election crisis today to express wholehearted support for Assembly Bill A08903 which would extend Mayoral control of the NY City schools. The Ayatollah, in a rare public statement, urged the Assembly to pass the bill, and furthermore called on the State Senate to put aside their differences to follow suit.

The bill, which would extend Mayoral control with minor modifications, was said to appeal to the Ayatollah in that on the surface it seems to address the concerns of critics, while containing only cosmetic changes designed largely to defuse opposition. A senior cleric in Iran, speaking to GBN News on condition of anonymity, said that the Ayatollah was hoping to take a page from Mayor Bloomberg’s playbook in defusing Iran’s own leadership crisis. “I only wish,” Ayatollah Khameini was said to have told his inner circle of advisors, “that I had the sort of power Mayor Bloomberg has over the city schools.”

It was unclear if there is any quid pro quo for the Ayatollah’ s support. However, sources at the Department of Education said that the Mayor’s offer to send Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to Teheran, to bring his reforms to the Iranian schools, was flatly rejected by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian President was said to have felt that Mr. Klein’s methods were “too harsh”, even for a repressive regime such as his own.