Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei (; 16 October 1937 – 12 September 2020) was an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja' and politician, a member of the Islamic Republic of Iran's powerful Guardian Council from 1980 to 1983 and also Attorney-General of Iran from 1983 to 1985. Whether he was a Marja' (Grand Ayatollah) was disputed. His calls for radical political reform in Iran were very controversial and in 2010 the government-sponsored "Qom Theological Lecturers Association" (Jame-e-Modarressin) declared him no longer qualified for emulation as a Grand Ayatollah. However, many of his followers continued to consider him their Marja, and this was acknowledged by several influential Maraji such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Naser Makarem Shirazi, Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardebili, and Hossein Noori Hamedani. Family, early life, and education Saanei was born in the Persian month of Aban 1318 SH and in the month of Shaban 1458 AH in the semi-desert farming village of Yingabad (now Nikabad), 60 km (37 mi) southwest of Isfahan. He was the third of four children (a fifth child died in infancy) of Hujjud-al-Islam Mohammed Ali Saanei (1892–1974) and his wife Sharbonoo (1899–1947). His father, despite having lost his own father at the age of six, and being partially sighted rose from untrained village mullah to study in hawza in his thirties, going on to serve his community for fifty years. Mohammad Ali's father Hajjmulla Yousef Yingabadi (1867–1899) was an Isfahan-trained cleric known for his strong sense of social justice, and was active in the Isfahan-area activities of Ayatollah Shirazi's tobacco movement in the early 1890s. At age six he began his education at the local maktab, later studying at home with his father after the latter noticed his intellect, studying the Quran and other basic texts of the period. Shortly before his tenth birthday, in the autumn of 1947, together with his father and brother Hassan (who also became a cleric and political official) he left for hawza in Isfahan, studying at that city's Kasseh Garan Madrassa (his father later returned to Nikabad). In Isfahan, his most noted teacher was the historian Allamah Mirza Mohammed Ali Habib Abadi (1890–1976). Saanei completed his preliminary studies (the equivalent of secondary school) in 1951, whereupon he went to Qom to continue his studies. 1955 saw Saanei place well in the first-level examinations (equivalent to a bachelor's degree) thus awarded the commendation of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. While at Qom he was a