Iran Rift Deepens With Arrest of President’s Ally
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
Published: June 23, 2011
A close ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has been arrested, Iranian news agencies reported Thursday, a development that suggested the power struggle between the president and the country’s highest religious leader is deepening.
Hamed Jafarnejad/Fars News Agency, via Associated Press
Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh in March. He resigned as deputy foreign minister this week and was detained on Thursday.
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Times Topic: Iran
Fars, a semiofficial state news agency, did not specify the reason for the arrest of the Ahmadinejad ally, Mohammed Sharif Malekzadeh, who resigned as deputy foreign minister this week, but a report by Mehr, another semiofficial agency, pointed to allegations of financial misdeeds.
Mr. Malekzadeh is believed to be the most senior Ahmadinejad associate to be arrested — and one of the first to have his arrest reported in Iran’s press — as the rift between the president and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s spiritual leader and highest authority, has worsened.
Mr. Ahmadinejad has been challenged on each of his cabinet appointments, including those of oil minister, sports minister and foreign minister. Mr. Malekzadeh stepped down on Tuesday after only three days in the face of a growing opposition from members of Parliament, who threatened to impeach the foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, if he did not dismiss Mr. Malekzadeh.
Some of the president’s allies, including Mr. Malekzadeh, have been accused of being part of a “deviant current” of disloyalty. As a result, many former allies have abandoned the president and proclaimed their allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei.
While such breaches are a common element of a political system that allows for two leaders — one spiritual, the other democratic — the current split has been unusually public since April, when Mr. Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader sparred over the fate of the country’s intelligence minister. The president fired the minister, only to watch as Ayatollah Khamenei reinstated him with a warning that Mr. Ahmadinejad, too, could be dismissed.
Mr. Malekzadeh is also an ally of the president’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is unpopular among the country’s most conservative clerics and is seen to be at the center of the political struggle. Last month, a hard-line newspaper called for Mr. Mashaei’s arrest, calling him a “very dangerous person who is propping up a new cult.”
Political analysts cautioned that the rift was unlikely to devolve into a permanent rupture. “The president now knows he lacks institutional power to challenge the prerogatives of the supreme leader,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Iran adviser to the Obama administration. “And Khamenei appreciates that an impeachment crisis would prove destabilizing for the system. Thus, a weakened Ahmadinejad who stays in his lane is good for the supreme leader.”
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