'Sedition Leader' Meets His Accusers

Cleric and leading reformist Mehdi Karrubi

Iran's ISNA news agency has posted photographs of opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi at the May 1 funeral of the father of Iranian Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini.

It must have been an awkward situation: Opposition leader and reformist cleric Karrubi greeting and exchanging small talk with some of the very officials who have so recently described him as "one of the leaders of sedition."

In the photographs, Karrubi is seen shaking hands and smiling with the culture minister, parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's first deputy, Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

Death sometimes brings together even those who are fiercely opposed to one another.

-- Golnaz Esfandiari