Ahmadinejad's Fate

If the Bush administration hopes to use Iran's President Mahmood Ahmadinejad as Iran's villainous face in a major conflict, they had better keep things moving right along. With his allies' defeat in Iran's recent election being interpreted as a rebuke of his policies, conservative newspapers have begun blaming him for an unnecessary crisis with the West, while reformists have over half the MP's they need to request his impeachment. Although elected as a populist, he has apparently failed to address pressing economic issues. One Iranian journalist has even spoken of a countdown to his fall.

I'd really like to know more about the situation behind the scenes there. I always thought Ahmadinejad's role in inter-Iranian power struggles went too unremarked in the American media. In something I never got around to blogging about earlier, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has even revealed that after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 death, insiders were divided over whether he should have a single replacement, possibly foreshadowing a push to weaken the power of Faqih Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, as well.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)