In general, Crowley's work demonstrates a consistent and progressively emphatic scepticism toward and frustration with the nobility and clerical elites.

From the moment that Khatami came to power, Ayatollah Khamenei and his clerical élite worried that the universities would become centers of dissent.

However, the Irish Catholic movements of the 16th century were invariably led by a small landed and clerical elite.

Before 1939 the ecumenical movement was always a clerical élite within the older Churches.

A new clerical elite who would be able to dispose of human lives as it sees fit.

"Iran is governed by an unelected clerical elite not accountable to the people," the official said, speaking anonymously under ground rules imposed by the department.

Power dynamics, sexual controls and the emergence of a clerical elite.

He grimly warned Iran not to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions, calling it "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people."

This class includes not only the traditional clerical elite, but also opponents of absolute clerical rule.

The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people.