Iran: Ahmadinejad Profiled, Tensions Between Conservative Factions

Frontline’s Tehran Bureau has published two articles profiling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s political history. The first article focuses on Ahmadinejad’s use of populism to set himself apart from the clergy, and his sometimes messianic self image. The second article explores the tensions between a more secular nationalism, often associated with Ali Shariati, and the “Velaayat-e Faghih (guardianship of the Islamic jurist),” associated with Supreme Leader Khomeini and the Islamic revolution. The second article concludes by looking at various scenarios for the presidential election in 2013, including a “Putin-Medvedev Shuffle,” necessary because Ahmadinejad is constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term. Rahim Mashaei, a close aide to Ahmadinejad, is named as a possible successor.

Amir Taheri, writing in the Wall Street Journal, also chronicles the growing tensions in Iran between the several conservative camps, which has garnered recent attention due to a threat by some legislators to impeach Ahmadinejad. “Behind all this is the struggle for power between the mullahs and the rising generation of the military and their technocratic allies. [...] Whatever the outcome, we are sure to witness a long and bitter fight within the ruling establishment. Because neither Ahmadinejad nor his rivals within the regime have anything positive to offer Iranians, both have to maintain the country’s state of permanent crisis.”

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