IRAN: Tangled times in Tehran
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In his Friday sermon in Tehran, ultraconservative Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami (not to be confused with reformist former President Mohammad Khatami) addressed signs of an emerging rift between the hard-line clique of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and more pragmatic groups within Tehran’s ruling establishment.
Addressing worshipers at Tehran University, he played down the recent war of words between the camp of Ahmadinejad and his powerful rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, ahead of parliamentary elections slated for spring.
‘It is better, as the late Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini said, ‘to argue in private like seminary students in school’ and to avoid the public podiums,’ he told the faithful.
He also took the opportunity to denounce the U.S., demanding that America apologize for ‘lying’ about the recent International Atomic Energy Assn. report on Iran’s nuclear program, chronicled here and here by The Times’ United Nations Bureau chief, Maggie Farley.
But then he lashed out at enemies closer to home, criticizing figures such as Rafsanjani for emphasizing the dangers of a U.S. attack on Iran to halt its nuclear program. Tensions within the Iranian ruling establishment’s quarrelsome camps have heated up ahead of March 2008 parliamentary elections.
This fight has been simmering for a while, as blogger Big Lizards notes in a posting summarizing some of the recent back and forth between the two camps. Veteran Time Magazine Middle East correspondent Scott Macleod also describes divisions in Tehran in a posting on his blog.
Hard-liners are nervous they’ll lose the parliamentary elections because of their handling of international affairs and missteps on the economy. Farideh Farhi, of the blog Informed Comment Global Affairs, wrote recently about the moderates and reformists’ boisterous reemergence onto the political scene.
...key players in Iranian politics have not given up on coming back to power. The fact that so many have been willing to be placed on the list, despite the assured attack against their personal lives and finances by the hard-liners, is a sign that contested politics in Iran (albeit still among a limited number of players) is alive and well.
— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Borzou Daragahi in Beirut