Ahmadinejad vs Khamenei. Political feud deepens in Iran

[biomat]

After pakistan, middle-east, turkey & now iran unrest..

Ahmadinejad row with Khamenei intensifies...

Iranian president said to be considering resignation after intelligence chief he fired was reinstated by supreme leader.

Last Modified: 06 May 2011 14:38

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A political dispute between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader is reported to have intensified.
Ahmadinejad is said to be contemplating resigning after Heidar Moslehi, the intelligence minister he had sacked, was reinstated by Khamenei.
The president is understood to have shirked some of his duties and skipped cabinet meetings for the past ten days in anger over the decision.
Mehrdad Khonsari, an analyst with the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies in London, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the dispute, which began last month, had become "serious".
"It shows the level of disunity at the very top of the Iranian [political] hierachy [with] Ahmadinejad having already polarised the internal political scene as a result of fraudulent election results that were announced more than 20 months ago," Khonsari said.
"He is now beginning to encroach on the powers and privileges vested in the supreme leader, and he and his constituency - mainly among the Revolutionary Guards - have tried to do this.
"And, of course, the supreme leader has tried to make a stand and in this stand he has been joined by many people from the ruling establishment who have been cast aside by Ahmadinejad."
Khonsari said that since the president came to power "powerful people like [Akbar Hashemi] Rasfanjani and ... [Mohammed] Khatami and many of the key reformers as well as the president of the current Council of Experts" have been sidelined.
"This is quite a standoff," he said. "Ahmadinejad, I think, at this particular time, has bitten more than he can chew and has been forced to essentially step back, but the fact [remains] that both he and the supreme leader are damaged as a result of this conflict."
Although speculation continues that Ahmadinejad may resign, Khonsari stopped short of hinting at the possibility of him quitting and instead said the dispute would lead to "further polarisation; further disunity [and] rivalry ... within a state structure that's already fractured".

'Grave economic issues'

Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabari in Tehran quoted an MP as saying that Ahmadinejad had asked the supreme leader to step down as he insists he cannot work with the intelligence minister.
Khonsari said upheavals in some Middle Eastern countries could spread to Iran if the rift continued.
"You have to bear in mind that what we're witnessing in the Middle East it all started with events in Iran some 20 months ago and Iran is not immune from the global cts from what we're witnessing as a result of this Arab awakening," he said.
"Peple in Iran are conscious there are grave economic issues; grave foreign policy issues confronting the Ahmadinejad government and the last thing he needs is to be in disarray with the supreme leader in a fight over a situation that's totally impervious to the wishes and aspirations of the general majority.
"There's no question in the minds of Iranians that this is going to be a very hot summer coming up."
The supreme leader wields more power than the president and appoints military leaders and the council that passes laws.

The dispute has led to the arrest of several close allies of the president, including Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the chief of staff.

Mashaei and others arrested have been accused of invoking djinns [spirits].
Ahmadinejad's administration has been dogged by allegations of a fraudulent election, which handed him a second four-year term in office in 2009.

The conduct of the vote led to protests which ended in a deadly crackdown and the detention of key opposition figures, including Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.
Iran has also been hit by a wave of sanctions by the US and the European Union over its nuclear programme, which many Western states suspect is intended to make an atomic bomb.
Tehran says the programme seeks to develop nuclear energy for solely civilian use.

Source:
Al Jazeera

 

[biomat]

Re: After pakistan, middle-east, turkey & now iran unrest..

Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

By wmw_admin on May 6, 2011
Saeed Kamali Dahghan – guardian.co.uk May 5, 2011



Close allies of Iran‘s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).
Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds”.
The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.
On Sunday, Ahmadinejad returned to his office after an 11-day walkout in an apparent protest over Khamenei’s reinstatement of the intelligence minister, who the president had initiallyasked to resign.
Ahmadinejad’s unprecedented disobedience prompted harsh criticism from conservatives who warned that he might face the fate of Abdulhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first post-revolution president who was impeached and exiled for allegedly attempting to undermine clerical power.
Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a hardline cleric close to Khamenei, warned that disobeying the supreme leader – who has the ultimate power in Iran – is equivalent to “apostasy from God”.
Ahmadinejad has so far declined to officially back Khamenei’s ruling over Heydar Moslehi, the minister at the centre of the row. In the first cabinet meeting since the president returned, Moslehi was absent.
Khamenei’s supporters believe that the top-level confrontation stems from the increasing influence of Mashaei, an opponent of greater involvement of clerics in politics, who is being groomed by Ahmadinejad as a possible successor.
But the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi – the revered saviour of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the second coming of Jesus.
Conservative clerics, who say that the Mahdi’s return cannot be predicted, have accused a “deviant current” within the president’s inner circle, including Mashaei, of being responsible for the film.
Ahmadinejad’s obsession with the hidden imam is well known. He often refers to him in his speeches and in 2009 said that he had documentary evidence that the US was trying to prevent Mahdi’s return.
Since Ahmadinejad’s return this week, at least 25 people, who are believed to be close to Mashaei, have been arrested. Among them is Abbas Amirifar, head of the government’s cultural committee and some journalists of Mashaei’s recently launched newspaper, Haft-e-Sobh.
On Saturday, Mojtaba Zolnour, Khamenei’s deputy representative in the powerful Revolutionary Guard, said: “Today Mashaei is the actual president. Mr Ahmadinejad has held on to a decaying rope by relying on Mashaei.”
Source

 

[gotti]

By Ali Akbar Dareini, The Associated Press Apr 20, 2011
TEHRAN, Iran Political pressures mounted on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after more than 200 lawmakers warned Wednesday that he must obey an order from the country's supreme leader reinstating Iran's powerful intelligence minister.
The showdown over Heidar Moslehi has brought fresh allegations that Ahmadinejad and his allies are trying to grab more power and challenge the all-encompassing authority of Iran's supreme leader. It also pointed to a potential fissure in the heart of Ahmadinejad's government as its base of support shrinks among parliament members and others.
Moslehi resigned Sunday following reported internal disputes with Ahmadinejad and the president publicly accepted it. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly ordered that Moslehi remain on the job, which has a key role in Iran's relentless crackdown on the opposition.
A statement signed by 216 parliament members more than two-thirds of the 290-seat chamber warned Ahmadinejad that he cannot ignore Khamenei, who has the last word in all state affairs.
"The parliament expects nothing but total obedience to ... the order without any question. (Khamenei) is above the three branches of power and the executive branch is defined under the supreme leader," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted lawmaker Hossein Naqavi as saying.
Ahmadinejad still holds highly influential backers, including the Revolutionary Guard that has sway over crucial programs such as Iran's nuclear efforts and oil industry. But the current tensions show a potentially widening gap between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, who has shown displeasure with the president's overreaching ambitions in the past.
Hardline media claim that Moslehi, the only cleric in the Cabinet, had been forced to resign after he fired one of his deputies, Hossein Abdollahi, without consulting Ahmadinejad.
But the core dispute appears to be over Ahmadinejad's close confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose views have outraged hard-liners, including a claim that Iran's ideology should take precedent over promoting Islam on the world stage.
Mashaei also has criticized Iran's intelligence services for "failures" to forecast the political upheavals in the Middle East, which has left some Sunni Arab leaders accusing Tehran of urging the unrest among fellow Shiite Muslims.
Khamenei's intervention to reinstate Moslehi has put Ahmadinejad in an awkward position: either openly snub Iran's top leader and risk more fallout from Khamenei or submit to the order and lose a high-profile political fight.
A pro-government website, dolateyar.com, posted a report Wednesday quoting Ahmadinejad as saying he didn't recognize Moslehi as his intelligence minister. Hours later, it removed the report. But the president's website still carried the report of Moslehi's resignation with no mention of Khamenei's rejection.
The parliament declaration claimed Ahmadinejad is challenging one of the bedrock tenets of Iran's theocracy by openly defying the supreme leader, who is considered by hard-liners as above the law and answerable only to God.
"Replacing the intelligence minister ... under the current sensitive circumstances is not to the country's interests at all ... the supreme leader resolved the problem with his wisdom. To the parliament, Mr. Moslehi continues to be the (intelligence) minister," according to the statement, which was read on state radio. "You are expected to follow the leader ... in supporting the intelligence minister."
Traditionally, the supreme leader must approve the appointments for the ministers of foreign affairs, intelligence, defence and interior.
Conservatives have praised Moslehi for cracking down on the opposition following the disputed 2009 presidential elections and discovering the Stuxnet computer virus, which made its way into Iran's nuclear and industrial sites.
To pressure Ahmadinejad, hard-line media published the text of Khamenei's order addressed to Moslehi telling him to stay. That Khamenei didn't address Ahmadinejad is widely considered as humiliating for the president.
Several websites said Moslehi showed up for work Wednesday and signed several documents in his capacity as intelligence chief. But Ahmadinejad made no mention of the dispute during his speech to thousands of people in western Iran.
Ahmadinejad, who in 2009 said Khamenei was like a father to him, has enjoyed strong support from the Iranian supreme leader but has defied the country's most powerful figure at times.
After his disputed re-election, Ahmadinejad bowed to pressure from the supreme leader who ordered Ahmadinejad to dismiss Mashaei as his choice for the key post of first vice-president. Mashaei's daughter is married to the president's son.
Hossein Shariatmadari, chief editor of the hard-line daily Kayhan, accused Mashaei of leading a "deviant current" within the government that seeks to challenge the authority of Khamenei and undermine the ruling system from within.


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