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    Showdown in Iran: Ahmadinejad Defies Khamenei

    By Michael Wolraich on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 5:50pm | World Affairs

    As the post-election protests by reformists simmers in the background, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly defied Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, setting the stage for a major political battle among the conservatives who hold power.

    Last Friday, Ahmadinejad appointed Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei to be his vice president. Mashaei, the father of Ahmadinejad's daughter-in-law, is seen as a moderate. Hard line conservatives despise him for a statement he made last year in which he declared Iran to be "a friend to the nation in Israel and the United States." Though he clarified the statement by saying that he had been referring to Israeli and American citizens, not to the governments, conservatives still fiercely protested the recent appointment.

    Yesterday, Ayatollah Khamenei sent a letter to Ahmadinejad telling him to dismiss Mashaei. Since Khamenei has final authority in political affairs, Iranian experts assumed that the matter was finished, and there were rumors that Mashaei would resign.

    But today, Ahmadinejad surprised the experts by insisting on retaining Mashaei. His defiance supports the view of some analysts that Ahmadinejad's tainted re-election amounts to a quiet coup by his allies in the powerful Revolutionary Guard at the expense of the clerical elites who have ruled Iran since the revolution.

    The situation is particularly perplexing because though Mashaei may be moderate, the Revolutionary Guards are seen as hard-liners who crushed the elections protests, whereas the clerics have been divided, and many reluctantly followed Khamenei's lead in approving the election results. At this point, it does not seem that any outsiders fully grasp what's going on inside Iran's government or how the struggle will play out. The outcome of this confrontation could transform the government in Iran, for better or for worse.

    For more on Ahmadinejad's power grab, read this NYT article from last month.

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    Comments

    It's pretty amusing when even Ahmadinejad isn't hard line enough for the hard liners.


    by Synthetic Zero (not verified) on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 6:19pm

    This again underlines how little we in the West understand Iranian domestic politics. I alluded to the many divisions within the Islamic republic's establishment in a previous thread, pointing out that Ahmadinejad had crafted a third way between the hard-line conservative and reformist branches of the clerical elite.

    While paying lip service to the theocratic revolutionaries of 1979, Ahmadinejad has built a separate, oddly more secular base among leaders of the military and Revolutionary Guard of the Iran-Iraq War. It remains to be seen if he can retain their loyalty while defying Khamenei, but it appears that may be exactly what he's betting on.

    He may very well have calculated that the Mousavi-led resistance to his own election was at least in part a rejection of the dominance of the old clerical elite (whether left or right), and that his best path forward is to channel some of that thirst for change behind himself.

    The election crisis has weakened all the top players in the Iranian power structure: Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani. In picking a fight with Khamenei over the appointment of someone apparently more moderate than himself, Ahmadinejad may be asserting his own claim to be top dog. Rafsanjani knows that Mousavi is not going to prevail; is it conceivable that he and Ahmadinejad can come to an accommodation that sidelines the increasingly weak-looking Khamenei? Sure, Rafsanjani is the ultimate wheeler-dealer.

    That would leave Mousavi, Karroubi and Larijani more or less out in the cold, unless they buy into the new order of things. But maybe Khamenei steps down, Rafsanjani gets the supreme leader title, Ahmadinejad restores the position of prime minister and gives it to one of those three. The new, more moderate Iranian government cuts the long-awaited grand bargain with the U.S., the Third World War is averted ...

    OK, maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. All I'll say for sure is: we live in interesting times.


    by acanuck on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 3:36am

    You'll have noticed, Genghis, that Meshaei has resigned. So now Ahmadinejad has blinked, which appears to strengthen Khamenei. Will the supreme leader now try to mend fences with Rafsanjani? It's getting to be like one of those three- or four-way Mexican standoff scenes in a spaghetti western: everyone is almost equally vulnerable, so no side can risk pressing their advantage.


    by acanuck on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 2:44am

    I like the visual. FYI, Ahmadinejad also sacked two ministers who had apparently questioned his loyalty to Khamenei and urged him to drop Mashaei immediately during a heated cabinet meeting.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 8:55am