Iran's Bubble Boys

These are the men who make up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inner circle -- and will determine if the Iranian president can strengthen his tenuous grip on power.

BY GENEIVE ABDO | JANUARY 29, 2010

Over the last seven months, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's base of support appears to have steadily shrunk: Countless conservative politicians and clerics, such as former Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, have even parted ways with the Iranian president and joined the expanding group of his foes. But though his list of detractors is getting longer, a number of men continue to stand behind the president, ensuring his hold on power.

Even some symbolic leaders of the opposition green movement, such as former President Mohammad Khatami, declared in recent days that they recognize Ahmadinejad as president of Iran, even if they remain convinced that his re-election on June 12 was rigged.

All the president's men -- and they are all men, with the exception of the female health minister, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi -- fall into two categories. Ahmadinejad's chosen advisors and cabinet members are either his relatives or men close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his powerful supporter. No matter the amount of criticism or condemnation heaped on the men in this inner circle, the president has remained as loyal to his appointees as they are to him.

The most glaring example is Ahmadinejad's appointment two weeks ago of Judge Saeed Mortazavi as the head of Iran's Task Force Against Smuggling. Mortazavi was just named in a report issued by the Iranian parliament as the man largely responsible for atrocities committed in July, following Iran's contested presidential election, by state security forces at the Kahrizak detention facility. According to the report, some demonstrators in the opposition movement imprisoned in Kahrizak were killed, and others tortured, due to mismanagement and abuse. The parliamentary committee said the dissidents were taken to the detention facility based on orders from Mortazavi, who at the time was Tehran's chief prosecutor. After the deaths were reported in July, Khamenei ordered the facility closed.

Despite Mortazavi's tainted reputation -- he is also notorious for shutting down hundreds of reformist newspapers and imprisoning their journalists in the late 1990s when he was a judge -- Ahmadinejad has ignored widespread criticism of his appointment as the anti-smuggling chief.

The closest person to Ahmadinejad is his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie, who is also the president's brother-in-law. After Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in the June 12 election, he initially tapped Mashaie to be his vice president. However, Mashaie's statement in 2008 that Iranians are "friends of all people in the world -- even Israelis" angered conservatives, who pressured Ahmadinejad to rescind the appointment. Ahmadinejad refused to back down until Khamenei instructed him to remove Mashaie. Ahmadinejad's subsequent decision to appoint Mashaie as his chief of staff was striking because it defied even Khamenei.

Majid/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS: IRAN, MIDDLE EAST
 

Geneive Abdo is director of the Iran program at the Century Foundation and the editor of www.insideIran.org. Arash Aramesh, the researcher for the website, contributed to this article.

 

HIPBONE

3:25 PM ET

February 1, 2010

Shi'a eschatology and world war

Thank you for filling us in on some of the figures in Pres. Ahmadinejad's circle.

You write of:

Ahmadinejad’s affinity for Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the powerful, radical cleric who thinks that a world war needs to occur for Islam to prevail around the globe. Such an outcome, according to Yazdi and his followers, will return the Hidden Imam in Shiite theology back to Earth.

As a student of messianic religious claims I am familiar with this suggestion. I know that it is "received wisdom" that Mesbah Yazdi and/or Ahmadinejad believes a world war, nuclear attack or other form of violent chaos will hasten the arrival of the Mahdi, but I am not clear where this idea originates.

Can you refer me to any statements made by Ahmadinejad or Mesbah Yazdi themselves -- or found in the literature of the return of the Twelfth Imam -- which clearly support this view?

This seems to me to be an issue on which the utmost clarity would be helpful, since a great deal depends on an accurate analysis of this (ultimately theological) point.