A President’s Defender Keeps His Distance - New York Times

A President’s Defender Keeps His Distance

Reuters

Under a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, left, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad listened to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran last March.

 

TEHRAN — A rift is emerging between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggesting that the president no longer enjoys the ayatollah’s full backing, as he did in the years after his election in 2005.

In the past, when Mr. Ahmadinejad was attacked by his political opponents, criticisms were usually silenced by Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters and regularly endorsed the president in public speeches. But that public support has been conspicuously absent in recent months. .....

“Now that Iran is not under the threat of a military attack, all contradictions within the establishment are surfacing,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economic and political analyst. “The biggest mistake that Americans have constantly made toward Iran was adopting radical approaches which provided the ground for radicals in the country to take control.” .......

Liberal commentators, here and abroad, have long argued that hard-line policies in the West only strengthen hard-line politicians in Iran, and conversely that lowering the threat level enhances the position of moderates. With conservative politicians who supported Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005 increasingly turning into his fiercest critics, and with Ayatollah Khamenei saying recently that Iran’s lack of contacts with the United States “does not mean that we will not have relations indefinitely,” the pundits would seem, for now, to be on the right track.

A President’s Defender Keeps His Distance - New York Times