Praktike - who has recently started an excellent wiki/blog, Liberals Against Terrorism, which is highly recommended if you are a liberal AND you are against terrorism - has an interesting post up on the current class rankings at Shi'ite High (via Zenpundit):
...the current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, isn't a Grand Ayatollah. The rules had to be changed to allow someone of his low stature to succeed to the rulership over Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who had been Khomenei's designated successor but was deemed insufficiently radical when he criticized some of Khomenei's repressive policies (Khomenei's letter to Montazeri is pretty harsh). Khamenei's website reveals his insecurity about his position; everyone knows he didn't get where he is by scholarly merit. The unshackling of Iraq's Shi'ites represents a direct threat to Khamenei's legitimacy in the sense that now the center of Shi'ite learning is in Najaf, which is led by several clerics of higher rank and with a different judicial philosophy...
'Read the whole thing' for some interesting insights into the unfamiliar world of clerical politics, and for the mildly startling admission - Praktike is hardly a big fan of OIF or the Bush administration - that "even if the Sunni areas of Iraq continue to be chaotic and violent, the undermining of the Islamic Republic's radical, klepto-theocratic rule may make the whole thing worthwhile after all."