Ahmadinejad to resign? Aides charged with sorcery?!

[Patrick Degan]

He turned me into a NEWT! Well... I got better...:

Al Jazeera is reporting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is considering stepping down:

A political dispute between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader is reported to have intensified.

Ahmadinejad is said to be contemplating resigning after Heidar Moslehi, the intelligence minister he had sacked, was reinstated by Khamenei.

The president is understood to have shirked some of his duties and skipped cabinet meetings for the past ten days in anger over the decision.

Mehrdad Khonsari, an analyst with the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies in London, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the dispute, which began last month, had become "serious".

Khonsari told Al Jazeera that Iran could see an uprising like the ones seen elsewhere in the Middle East in recent months. "You have to bear in mind that what we're witnessing in the Middle East it all started with events in Iran some 20 months ago and Iran is not immune from the global cts from what we're witnessing as a result of this Arab awakening," he said.

The Guardian, meanwhile, has more on the dispute, include the arrest of Ahmadinejad's aides for being involved in "magic":

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Iran continues it's steadfast march to the 8th century. Meanwhile, I have my doubts about seeing a "Persian Spring" breaking out.

[Mr. Coffee]

You gotta love it when accusations of sorcery enter politics. Couldn't have happened to a better pack of assholes.

Edit: Does this mean the Ordo Malleus works for Iran's Supereme Leader or are his pouldrons not big enough yet?

[Samuel]

They leave out the best part from the Guardian:

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".
...
But the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi – the revered saviour of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the second coming of Jesus.

Also from a blog:
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2011/05/ah ... ested.html

Two of the casualties on Ahmadinejad's side are the presidential prayer leader, Abbas Amirifar and Ahmadinejad's personal exorcist, Abbas Ghaffari.

Abbas Amirifar is accused of being the man behind the controversial CD which was circulated in Iran depicting Ahmadinejad as the prophesied, Shoaib-ibn-Saleh. the right hand man of Imam Mahdi, who will liberate the world according to the Shiite theology, from corruption and repression. According to the CD, Ahmadinejad manifests all the prophesied characteristics which include a small beard, thin body frame, dark skin, leader of armies, sharp insight with strong determination and from the city of Ray, current day Tehran. Amirifar has also showed unequivocal support for Ahmadinejad's right hand man, Rahim Mashaei.

The other interesting casualty which is said to be the most important reason for Ahmadinejad's 10 day absence, is the arrest of his mysterious exorcist, Abbas Ghaffari. The website which first reported the arrest of the exorcist, 1Shanbeh, claims metaphysical capabilities that Abbas Ghaffari is supposed to have and hints that the sudden heart attack of Ghaffari's interrogator could also have something to do with Ghaffari's skills in the black art.

It looks like your standard power struggle... with one side claiming that they are the right hand man of the messiah. Are they that out of contact with reality, or is it just an attempt to accumulate power.

[Pelranius]

The question is whether Ahmadinejad or Khamenei has a greater sway in the Revolutionary Guard?

Now Khamenei is the Supreme Leader, but Ahmadinejad is the guy distributing money and economic favors to the Guard's leaders and their relatives, and he is a war veteran as well.

[JME2]

...Wow.

That's really all I can say. They really are stuck in the 8th century.

[Eframepilot]

The question is whether Ahmadinejad or Khamenei has a greater sway in the Revolutionary Guard?

Now Khamenei is the Supreme Leader, but Ahmadinejad is the guy distributing money and economic favors to the Guard's leaders and their relatives, and he is a war veteran as well.

Ahmadinejad is replacable, however, and he's alienating nearly every single significant figure of power in Iran. The commander of the Revolutionary Guard has come out strongly against him:

LINK

Some of his former supporters, including the influential Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, have launched savage attacks on Ahmadinejad telling him that disobedience to the Supreme Leader would lead to his dismissal. Mesbah-Yazdi said: “Opposing the Vali-e Faqih [Khamene'i] is the same as opposing the Holy Imams (peace be upon them), and according to some traditions it is at the level of attributing partners to God”, which is regarded as the most grievous sin in Islam.

When some of Ahmadinejad’s friends said that the relationship between him and the Supreme Leader is like the relationship between a father and a son, Ayatollah Khamene’i’s representative at the Revolutionary Guards rejected that analogy, and said that the relationship between him and the leader should be that of a slave and a master, a pupil and a teacher, and a king and a subject. He has no right even to question the orders of the leader, let alone reject them.

Another influential clergyman Ayatollah Abolqasem Khaz’ali, a member of the Guardian Council, referring to Ahmadinejad’s boast that he was elected by the people, said: “… if someone receives not 20 million but 40 million votes, without the leader’s endorsement those votes have no value and are just a number of zeroes.” He said that only the leader’s backing would put a figure in front of those zeroes.

According to the reports of various news agencies in Tehran, a few nights ago Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the influential secretary of the Guardian Council, visited Mahmud Ahmadinejad and asked him to obey the leader. In a hostile mood, Ahmadinejad replied: “I owe nothing to the leader that I should give in!” He went on to say that first of all, he had managed to put an end to the power of the reformers. Secondly, he was the person who had persisted with the nuclear program despite universal opposition. Thirdly, he had carried out difficult economic reforms and implemented the project on targeted subsidies that nobody had been able to undertake before. He complained that the only power that he had was to appoint and dismiss ministers and Khamene’i had taken that power from him too.

On Thursday evening, 28 April 2011, again Ayatollah Jannati and Dr Ali Larijani (the Majles speaker) had decided to meet with Ahmadinejad to mediate between him and the leader, but he had refused to receive them. Most ominously for Ahmadinejad, the commander of the revolutionary guards has also come out strongly on the side of Ayatollah Khamene’i, reminding Ahmadinejad of the fate of the first Iranian President Bani-Sadr who was dismissed by Ayatollah Khomeyni shortly after the revolution.

[paladin]

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see either side accusing the US of being involved.

[JME2]

Not yet, anyway. Give it time.