 He was prosecuted after a lecture comparing Iran's government—the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist ("velayat-e faqih")—to a regime of "pharaohs".His arrest fuelled debates on whether Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei should be able to claim divine sanction for unlimited state powers.Protests against his arrest were held at the Iranian consulate in Karbala, Basra and Najaf, Kuwait City and Iran's embassies in Baghdad and London.