My BFF
“Although it was predictable that the Moslehi affair would be costly for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his camp, the extent of the toll for his defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is only now becoming clear. According to the Etedaal newspaper and website, several people close to Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested by security services. (Etedaal originally reported that 25 people were arrested in the sweep, but later issued a correction indicating that the actual total was substantially lower…….)”

“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 initially asked 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……”

Did Ahmadinejad have an epiphany?
It looks like Ahmadinejad has been trying to undermine the rule of the mullahs, his former allies. This was bound to happen with someone of Ahamadinejad’s aggressive personality. It is the eternal struggle between the theocrats who want to keep power and the ‘elected’ civilians who decide that they want to push them back into the mosques and seminaries. Apparently at some point in his second and last term in office Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come to see the necessity of reducing the power of all these mullahs in government. He seems to have reached the inevitable conclusion all civilian presidents reach: the clergy should stick to their mosques and seminaries and leave the government to the ‘elected’ civilians. That is how I see it, although Ahmadinejad and his allies are not saying so openly. Possibly the mismanagement of the economy and foreign affairs were the last straw. The next few months should be very interesting in Iranian politics, as both sides maneuver for the elections of 2013. It will possibly be a power struggle unseen in Iran since the early 1980s.
Cheers
mhg



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