The Incredible Shrinking Ahmadinejad

Iran's president is looking weak, and that's just what the supreme leader wants.

BY BARBARA SLAVIN | MAY 25, 2011

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now discovering what his predecessors in Islamic Iran's unique dual system of government all learned to their sorrow: You serve at the pleasure of the supreme leader, and he prefers his presidents weak.

In the aftermath of a failed attempt by Ahmadinejad to fire Iran's intelligence minister last month, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his surrogates have moved against supporters of Ahmadinejad and of his controversial chief aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Two dozen people close to the president and Mashaei have been arrested, including Abbas Amirifar, the prayer leader and head of cultural affairs in the president's office, who reportedly attempted suicide in prison last week. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad's top vice president, Hamid Baghaei, was suspended last weekend from holding political office for four years because of unspecified "violations."

It now appears that Ahmadinejad will be forced to jettison Mashaei, a close friend of 30 years whose daughter is married to Ahmadinejad's son, if the president intends to remain in office through the end of his term in 2013. And even if he does get rid of Mashaei, Ahmadinejad will be a feeble lame duck, a pale shadow of the seemingly superconfident figure who has strutted the world stage since he was first elected in 2005.

"Everybody smells blood," said Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corporation. "Ahmadinejad's fatal mistake was to challenge Khamenei head-on over the intelligence minister."

Ordered to retain the minister, Heydar Moslehi, Ahmadinejad refused to attend cabinet meetings for 11 days and sought to reaffirm his power by firing three other ministers, including the official in charge of Iran's crucial oil industry.

Increasingly, however, the president finds himself checked at every turn.

On Monday, May 23, a senior presidential advisor, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, announced that presidential trips to the provinces -- a favorite means for Ahmadinejad to distribute largesse, gain rural support, and make speeches covered by Iranian state media -- have been postponed for the time being.

Nor can the president escape abroad to represent Iran in Vienna next month at a major OPEC meeting. On May 20, the Guardian Council -- a powerful, clerical-run body that vets legislation and candidates for office -- declared that Ahmadinejad could not serve as caretaker head of the oil ministry and would have to name someone else. (Iran serves as president of OPEC this year and needs to keep the price of oil as high as possible to finance its budget, pegged to $81.50 a barrel.)

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS: POLITICS, IRAN, MIDDLE EAST
 

Barbara Slavin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation. She has interviewed Iran's current president and his two predecessors and visited Iran seven times.

PARADISE

2:45 PM ET

May 25, 2011

Ahmadinejad: the winner

Ahmadinejad knows what he is doing. he hasn't made any mistake and also it doesn't show he gives up since he has repeatedly tried different ways to challenge supreme leader & he has gotten some achievements. first of all he could engage supreme leader himself in the middle of conflict. supreme leader always interferes in different issues hiddenly so ordinary people couldn't understand his outstanding role in state's affaris. now everybody knows Khamenei really is the one who conducts every policy. now it's obvious that recent rift between president and parliment & GC is in fact rift between president and supreme leader but supreme leader doesn't want to announce his ideas publicly so he uses his tools such as judiciary, parliment and GC. foreign affairs, intelligence ministry and oil ministry are bases of the country over which Ahmadinejad has had challenges with Khamenei. in one of them he has won since he fired the minister when he was abroad! considering the achievement I mentioned above the second one was also victory for him. now is the time for third: oil ministry. Although his withdrawal from attending OPEC seems as a defeat but I'm sure he can convert this defeat into victory very soon. finally I think, though it seems unbelievable, Ahmadinejad will be the winner of this struggle.

 

PEOTRE

7:37 PM ET

May 25, 2011

Staying power

Ahmadinejad has had incredible staying power on the world stage. He also enjoys robust popularity in his own country. No amount of Western propaganda can erase his achievements, his humble but confident manner of reaching out to the nations of the world in the cause of peace. He has achieved a legacy that will not be easily erased or surpassed.

 

MACKSFIELD

4:28 PM ET

May 25, 2011

midget boy

I'm sure we have all been around fools at one time or another. But this 1/2 minion 1/2 moron - Ahmadinejad is the Super Fool of the Mid-east. Sure there is some stiff competition in the world of dictators such as Hugo the clown of South America and of course Saddam one of the most evil so-called humans ever to live on planet earth. And one of Saddam's Tariq Aziz , didn't they call him Bagdad Bob? But I digress, Ahmadinejad really is the mackdaddy of fools. He needs to go.

 

CHECKMOOT

7:05 AM ET

May 26, 2011

Your post

You started digressing when you mistakenly named Tarik Aziz as Baghdad Bob. Saddam had his faults, but most evil ? Equal rights for women, religious freedom, kept the country together and the fundamental terrorists out. Had to be tough to do that. Ahmadjinedad is just Irans version of George Bush. Every country must suffer it's occasional nut.

 

NICHOLAS WIBBERLEY

3:02 AM ET

May 26, 2011

Give the guy a chance

It baffles me, the extraordinary venom Ahmadinejad evokes in some Americans when in fact he is more cultured, intelligent and peaceably inclined than most world leaders, and he reflects the progressive arm of political secularisation. If US foreign policy had been more imaginative sixty years ago and since, Iran and the US might have made a formidable alliance, the ME might have been at peace, Afghanistan and Iraq could have evolved coherently, Israel would not have nuclear weapons or be the problem it is, terrorism would have no ideological element, and the Gulf states might not have been so repressive and in such consequent turmoil today, global finances would be in better shape, and the citizens of the world would be able to exist and move about without being scrutinised and provocatively molested.

 

RANDAL

5:59 AM ET

May 26, 2011

US venom against Ahmadinejad

"It baffles me, the extraordinary venom Ahmadinejad evokes in some Americans when in fact he is more cultured, intelligent and peaceably inclined than most world leaders, and he reflects the progressive arm of political secularisation"

It's hardly a mystery - he has committed the unpardonable sin of breaching the western Holocaust taboo created and maintained by the Jewish and Israeli lobbies. He's also in the firing line for the Israeli lobby simply by virtue of his being the Iranian figurehead.

These two lobbies (which in polite company we are supposed to pretend don't really exist) have immense power and influence within, in particular, the US political and media elites.

Amreicans (to generalise) are the most ignorant and propagandised people in the world. They pretty much swallow this kind of demonisation whole.

As for Ahmadinejad himself, I think you are pretty much correct in your assessment. I don't agree with everything he says and does, but, for a mainstream political leader, he's a pretty decent guy.

 

PSWARRIOR

10:38 AM ET

May 26, 2011

Different direction

Ahmadinejead is called Hitler,a tyrant,one who stole the elections and suppresses his people,one who cheats entire world and who secretly prepares nuclear bombs to wash out Israel from the world map,he will send missiles against Europe and against US and look what insolence provokes Israel saying that Israel is too weak karmaloop codes!!!!Incredible insolence to provoke the Israeli and US warmongers

 

BMOORE8888

10:47 AM ET

May 26, 2011

"A pretty decent guy"

Apart art from denying the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad also denied that Iran has any Gay people!

Like many in Iran's current regime, he is a homophobe and an anti-Semite and is also a religious extremest of the first order.

He along w/ the other govt. sponsored thugs also had absolutely no problem shooting down their own unarmed civilians in the streets, during the recent uprisings over the rigged elections that insured that the "hard-liners" would stay in office for another term.

Iran has become an ugly and intolerant religious police state and has also been left in a perpetual state of economic stagnation since the "revolution" and has survived primarily as a result of it's oil revenues since then.

The negative potential of having a zealot like Ahmadinejad who also believes in the return "Hidden Imam" and who well may try and hasten this phantom Imam's return with a nuclear exchange w/ Israel once Iran finally has the "bomb" is unsettling to say the least.

If you still regard this record as one his still being "a decent guy", I shudder to imagine how you define repressive?

 

RANDAL

2:58 PM ET

May 26, 2011

Pretty much proving my point

It's pretty silly to call Ahmadinejad an antisemite. It doesn't appear he has anything against Jews, per se - in fact all the evidence is that he has no personal animus against them. He (rightly, imo) opposes Israel, which is what the Israel Lobby want people to regard as evidence of antisemitism, but which obviously isn't, for sane people. And he "denies the Holocaust" which, again, is wanted by those who benefit from the Holocaust Taboo to count as evidence of antisemitism but is often really just overdone historical scepticism fuelled by hostility to the propaganda uses Israel makes of it. Most Iranians correctly distinguish between Jews and Zionists, and while the situation is understandably tense at times, it's clear Ahmadinejad is personally committed to that distinction, like most senior Iranians following Khomeini's dictum.

As for his dislike of homosexual activity, well that isn't a problem for me personally since, as a conservative, I disapprove of it myself. So do an awful lot more people in the west than are prepared to risk losing their careers to harassment by saying so. I wouldn't want it banned by law here again as it used to be, but I regard that as entirely an internal matter for sovereign states.

Iran's "govt. sponsored thugs" did no more (and probably a lot less) than the US government thugs would do if confronted by a subversive foreign-backed uprising in their own country.

As for Iran's economic performance, well that's a matter for Iranians, or it would be if it weren't partly the consequence of aggressive US economic warfare against Iran. Instead of accepting Iranian anti-Americanism in 1979 as reasonable payback for your interference in Iran's government from the 1950s onwards, you decided (largely at Israel's behest) to make a big issue of it, with the result that instead of fading away over time it has festered and grown. Fairly typical US foreign policy stupidity.

And finally, the usual bullshit about Ahmadinejad (and Iran) being a potential "national nuclear suicide bomber". First, Ahmadinejad doesn't have the authority to order such an action even if Iran were ever to obtain nuclear weapons (which is doubtful at all, and certainly many years away, as everyone other than the paranoid US/Israeli warmongers are well aware). Second, this relies upon the usual American-Israeli illogic whereby they pretend that Iranians are at one and the same time so fanatically religious that they are desperate to kick off their own certain destruction just in order to get one big blow in against the US or Israel, and so cynically irreligious that they will ignore their own supreme theological authority's repeated edicts forbidding them nuclear weapons.

Yank and Israeli warmongers - poisonous numpties.

 

CNA

1:30 AM ET

June 21, 2011

Iran has become an ugly and

Iran has become an ugly and intolerant religious police state and has also been left in a perpetual state of CNA Hawaii economic stagnation since the "revolution" and has survived primarily as a result of it's oil revenues since then.

 

PERSON_GUYZ

2:11 AM ET

June 23, 2011

it's obvious that recent rift

it's obvious that recent rift between president and parliment & GC is in fact rift between president and supreme leader but supreme leader doesn't want to announce his ideas publicly so he uses his tools such as judiciary, parliment and GC earnmoneyonlinescams.Iran's "govt. sponsored thugs" did no more (and probably a lot less) than the US government thugs would do if confronted by a subversive foreign-backed uprising in their own country.