In Rebuke to Iran’s President, Courts Void Release of Hikers
Not 24 hours later, Iran’s courts issued a stinging public rebuke: they said he did not have the authority to free the prisoners. The fate of the two American hikers remains uncertain, since the courts said they would review the defendants’ application for bail. But the back and forth has delivered a blow to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s already diminished standing at home, allowing his adversaries within Iran’s system to undercut his credibility as he prepared to mingle with the heads of state and to court international news media at the General Assembly gathering next week. “The conservatives are trying to establish the fact that Ahmadinejad is not their boss,” <a href="http://www.salehandbagsbags.com"><strong>lv handbags</strong></a> said Vali Nasr, a professor at Tufts University and an expert in Iranian affairs. “He is a weakened president, and they are perfectly comfortable embarrassing him. It is a signal that it is perfectly O.K. to attack him, and you might get brownie points for doing it.” The very public rebuke by Iran’s conservative establishment was the latest reminder of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s deep split with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once his most ardent ally. What was intended as a grand humanitarian gesture to win diplomatic capital instead was reminiscent of one of his low points on the world stage: when in 2009 he initially supported a nuclear deal with the United States, France and Russia that would have calmed tensions with the West, only to see the deal rejected by Ayatollah Khamenei and other conservatives at home. “Ahmadinejad is still trying to carve out a space for himself, but Khamenei does not want this to happen,” said Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert based in Virginia. Handpicked by the supreme leader, Mr. Ahmadinejad has run afoul of his most important patron by challenging the authority of the clergy and trying to recast the presidency into a more powerful post that could operate independently of — and in some cases in contradiction to — the supreme leader. That conflict burst into public view in April in a battle over control of the Intelligence Ministry, a battle the president lost. It re-emerged this week, first when conservatives accused a financier close to Mr. Ahmadinejad along with his right-hand man, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, of perpetrating a record 2.6 billion bank fraud, the largest in Iran’s contemporary history. Mr. Ahmadinejad had groomed Mr. Mashaei to succeed him as president in 2013, until the internal battle with Ayatollah Khamenei led to the arrests of several of their associates and eliminated talk of such a succession. On Wednesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said he had asked the chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani — the same powerful conservative who squashed the prisoners’ release — for an “honest” investigation of the bank fraud. “Whoever <a href="http://www.salehandbagsbags.com"><strong>gucci handbags</strong></a> they are — whether in the government, judiciary or Parliament, or those with sacred attire — capture them, try them, punish them and expose them to the people,” Mr. Ahmadinejad urged, referring to the clerical establishment and the branches of government it most influences. “The cabinet is a red line,” he added, “and if they want to touch the cabinet, then defending it is my duty.” But, in an extraordinary departure, Iranian state television— also controlled by the conservatives — did not broadcast the speech. It was shown only on the Web site of the Iranian presidency, though state news agencies covered it. Mr. Ahmadinejad always represented a very different style and a different constituency from Iran’s clerical and commercial elites. The son of a blacksmith who rose to power through military service, he mingled with clerics made rich by the Iranian revolution whose scholarly pedigrees sometimes go back for generations. He rattled the conservatives around Ayatollah Khamenei with his messianic rhetoric and presumptions of religious authority, redistributive economic policies and an appetite to expand his own power at the expense of the clerics.
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