Holy Money Machine

The Shrine of Imam Reza, a sumptuous parade of
mosques, minarets and marble courtyards, is vaster than Vatican City.
It draws more Muslim pilgrims than even Mecca, birthplace of the
Prophet Muhammad in Saudi Arabia.

Each year, more than 12 million Iranians, Iraqis and
other Shiite Muslims journey to the shrine here in northeast Iran to
pay homage to Imam Reza, a revered ninth-century martyr. All come to
pray before his tomb -- and many to stuff bank notes in a
gold-and-silver cage that protects his ancient bones.

The shrine has for centuries intermingled faith and
money, collecting donations of cash, land, jewelry and works of art
from the devout. Today, it is not only Iran's most sacred religious
site but also, by some reckonings, the Islamic republic's biggest and
richest business empire.

Companies in its corporate portfolio make everything
from city buses to pizza strudels to growth hormones for
caviar-producing sturgeon. At the same time, it operates an
Islamic-studies center and boasts a huge collection of Qurans.
No-smoking signs at its sanctuary read, "This is the flight zone of
angels. Don't pollute it with smoke."

"We are an Islamic conglomerate," says Mehdi Azizian,
business adviser and brother-in-law of Ayatollah Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, the
shrine's 73-year-old chief. "We don't expect anyone to understand
everything we do, because it is so big."

The dual role of the Imam Reza Shrine helps explain
how the power of Iran's aging clerical elite endures, nearly three
decades after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. "Money is power, and the
mullahs...dominate some important parts of the Iranian economy," says
Thierry Coville, a French expert on Iran's economy and author of a
recent book on Iran.

The Imam Reza Shrine is part of a cluster of bonyads,
nominally charitable foundations with huge holdings acquired through
generations of donations or confiscated after the revolution. They
publish no accounts and, in most cases, answer only to Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali K