Ahmadinejad accuses hardliners deliberately provoking

[Skgoa]

... a confrontation with West

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...t-of-Iran.html

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has accused the country's hardline religious leadership of deliberately provoking a confrontation with the West to weaken his position ahead of forthcoming parliamentary elections.

According to Western diplomats, in one recent outburst Mr Ahmadinejad denounced advisers working for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader and the guardian of the country's Islamic revolution, as "a bunch of madmen".

In a series of recent meetings in Tehran, the Iranian president has repeatedly criticised policies pursued by officials loyal to Mr Khamenei, who include senior members of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij paramilitary militia. Mr Ahmadinejad claims the supreme leader's loyalists are deliberately provoking a confrontation with the West to make him look weak, thereby undermining his supporters' prospects in elections to the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, which are to be held on March 2.

The claims come after, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, the president’s personal media adviser, was found guilty on Sunday by a Tehran court of insulting Mr Khamenei.

The court sentenced Mr Javanfekr, who runs Iran’s IRNA news agency, to a year in prison and a five-year ban on media and political activities for comments he made on his personal website. Mr Javanfekr yesterday denied the charge and said he would appeal against the verdict. “My adherence to the sage supreme leader is more apparent than the sun, and is backed by my record,” he said.

Mr Javanfekr’s conviction is the latest attempt by Mr Khamenei’s supporters to silence Mr Ahmadinejad, who has accused them of responsibility for the assault on the British Embassy in Tehran in November, and the failed assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian US ambassador. He also blames Khamenei loyalists for trying to prop up President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, trying to provoke a confrontation with the West over the Strait of Hormuz, the main shipping route to the Gulf, and trying to sabotage ties with neighbouring Turkey.


Despite his frequent denunciations of the West, in private Mr Ahmadinejad is more cautious about provoking open confrontation, fearing that any further deterioration in relations would have a crippling impact on the Iranian economy. Iran is suffering a severe economic crisis as a result of UN sanctions imposed because of its nuclear programme, with the value of the rial falling 20 per cent in the past month.
During his re-election campaign in 2009, Mr Ahmadinejad promised to revive the country’s economic fortunes but he now complains that the supreme leader’s policies are making this impossible.
A Western diplomat who has recently returned from Tehran said: “Iran is experiencing a major power struggle between those, like the supreme leader, who are totally opposed to any form of compromise with the West, and the Iranian president, who wants to adopt a more pragmatic approach and avoid an open confrontation with the West, which would only further damage Iran’s fragile economy.”
Last week it was disclosed that President Barack Obama had sent a message to Mr Khamenei through a “secret channel” warning him that any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz would be regarded as a “red line” by Washington and result in military action.
In addition, the Pentagon has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf and doubled the number of American troops based in Kuwait.
In an interview at the weekend, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, warned that Iran was likely to “become a greater crisis as 2012 goes on”.

Huh. The plot thickens. If Ahmadinejad needs to get so drastic, he must really be feeling the heat.

[Sidewinder]

Sounds like someone is trying to provoke an Iranian Civil War. If one occurs, the Iranians have themselves to blame- not that they'll do so, the Ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad likely blaming some Zionist conspiracy, despite the likelihood the order, "Fire upon those protesters!" will come from themselves.

[CJvR]

There are worse lunatics than Amadjihadii, Allah's anointed election winner?

[ChaserGrey]

There are worse lunatics than Amadjihadii, Allah's anointed election winner?

Yep. They're building nukes too. Sleep tight!

Seriously: This is very interesting, not least because criticizing unnamed (at least in the article) "advisers" to the Ayatollah is as close as Ahmadinejad can come to directly criticizing the Ayatollah without directly triggering civil war. It'll also be quite a relief if it turns out that not all of the Iranian government is backing the current policy of confrontation with the West.

[Sea Skimmer]

Ahmadinejad is running scared because the Iranian economy is quickly unraveling as the rial crashes and that's a huge blow to his support base among the lower classes. The article is understating the problem by saying the currency dropped 20% this month, estimates of the drop since the US announced the new sanctions, which aren't even in effect yet, in December is 40-55%. Businesses in Iran have simply stopped operating unit they can convert all the rial they have into dollars before it gets worse. Russia has agreed to shift some dollar denominated trade to other currencies but few other people in the world are going to offer politically motivated support like that. Iran has a fair bit of foreign exchanges reserves but they are going to start eating into those seriously trying to prop up the currency. A civil war isn't too likely at all but Ahmadinejad is the highest ranking figure who can actually loose his job without one.