These are critical times for Iran and the middle-east as a whole. With Tehran’s nuclear standoff still to be peacefully resolved, it is apparent that the Islamic republic’s radical leader president Ahmadinejad is in no mood to give in to American and European pressures. But things are not all that rosy within the Iranian domestic political structure. Many experts feel that president Ahmadinejad faces greater domestic uncertainty than it appears from the outside.
Many Iranians are concerned that the tough and arrogant stance taken by their president over the nuclear issue to defy the international community is likely to cause more problems to the country. Although the president, a former revolutionary guard, is considered the face of Iran’s opposition to the United States, he has lost his popularity due to the inability of the government to tackle a high rate of inflation. Many of president Ahmadinejad’s backers and supporters think that their president is unnecessarily spending too much time and money on Iran’s foreign policy rather than on problematic domestic issues.
According to professor Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco, many powerful hardline clerics within Iran’s Islamic structure headed by the Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei consider Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a ‘loose cannon’ who has no diplomatic brain. The Islamic clerics of Iran’s Guardian Council headed by the Ayatollah have the final say on the government’s domestic and foreign policies and certain reversal of president Ahmadinejad’s policies by the Guardian Council is a clear sign of a crack within the radical structure of which the president is an integral part.
President’s Ahmadinejad’s warning to domestic critics, particularly the reformists and the toughening of Islamic Sharia laws like strict dress codes across the country are signs that Tehran is concerned about American and western intelligence role in stirring up unrest among the Iranian reformists and hardliners.
It must be admitted that as far as the nuclear issue is concerned, president Ahmadinejad has tried to assert his hardline rhetoric on his nuclear negotiators which has not gone down well with personalities like Ali Larijani who was replaced by Saeed Jalili as chief atomic negotiator. Being a close associate of the Ayatollah and considered a moderate by international nuclear diplomats, Ali Larijani would not take his replacement by the president very well. It remains to be seen how long president Ahmadinejad continues with his political toughness in the face of constant domestic and international pressure.
Link: Guardian
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