IRAN:Iran's MPs have rebelled while their president is away, prompting speculation about his future in power, writes Robert Taitin Tehran
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suffered a potentially fatal blow to his authority after the country's supreme leader gave an apparent green light for MPs to attack his economic policies.
In an unprecedented rebuke, 150 parliamentarians signed a letter blaming Mr Ahmadinejad for raging inflation and high unemployment and criticising his government's failure to deliver the budget on time. They also condemned him for embarking on a tour of Latin America - from which he returns tomorrow - at a time of mounting crisis.
The signatories included a majority of the president's former fundamentalist allies, now apparently seeking to distance themselves as his prestige wanes.
MPs also criticised Mr Ahmadinejad's role in the UN Security Council dispute over Iran's nuclear programme amid growing evidence that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, has ordered him to stay silent on the issue.
The ayatollah, who was hitherto loyal to the president, is said to blame Mr Ahmadinejad for last month's UN resolution imposing sanctions over Iran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment.
Ayatollah Khameini has ultimate authority on foreign policy, and is rumoured to be so disillusioned with Mr Ahmadinejad's performance that he has refused to meet him on occasion.
In a further indicator, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the leader of parliament's fundamentalists and a former lieutenant who helped the president choose his cabinet, denounced Mr Ahmadinejad's economic policies as "wrong" and told him to stop blaming others.
The mounting criticism is fuelling speculation that Mr Ahmadinejad is politically doomed. Observers have even suggested he might be impeached and removed from office.
"Ahmadinejad's golden era is over and his honeymoon with the supreme leader is finished. He has problems even meeting the supreme leader," said an Iranian political commentator, Eesa Saharkhiz. "The countdown to his dismissal has already begun.There is a probability that he cannot even finish his current four-year period."
Signs of Mr Ahmadinejad's declining stock have emerged less than a month after a crushing defeat in local authority elections, when only one-fifth of his supporters won seats. His most powerful political rival, Hashemi Rafsanjani, also topped the poll in elections to the experts' assembly, a body empowered to appoint and supervise the supreme leader. Mr Rafsanjani has been a vocal critic of the president's strident anti-western rhetoric and has urged compromise on the nuclear issue.
Pragmatists within the Islamic leadership claim that Mr Ahmadinejad's inflammatory rhetoric, including a declaration that Iran would not suspend uranium enrichment for "even one day", sank any chance of a deal.
Two recent newspaper articles suggested that this is now the official view. Jomhouri Islami, which has previously carried unsigned articles by the ayatollah, accused Mr Ahmadinejad of endangering public support for the nuclear programme by hijacking it as a personal cause to disguise his government's economic failings.
"Turning the nuclear issue into a propaganda slogan gives the impression that you, to cover up flaws in the government, are exaggerating its importance. If people get the impression that the government is exaggerating the nuclear case to divert attention from their demands, you will cause this national issue to lose public support," the newspaper wrote.
The newspaper Hamshari, whose director, Hossein Entezami, is a member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team, was more blunt: "At the very moment when the nuclear issue was about to move away from the UN Security Council, the fiery speeches of the president have resulted in the adoption of two resolutions [ against Iran]."
"Jomhouri Islami is the affirming voice of Iran's political system and of the wishes of the supreme leader and high-ranking officials, so its criticism of Ahmadinejad's political behaviour smacks of a serious reminder to him," said Mohammad Atrianfar, director of the recently banned reformist newspaper Shargh.
An uncharacteristically subdued response by the president to last Thursday's seizure by US forces of five Iranian citizens in Iraq - described by the Tehran government as "diplomats" - is being seen as a sign that warnings are being heeded.
But Iran's deepening economic woes, which prompted Sunday's letter from MPs, suggest that the worst may have yet to come for a man elected on promises to raise living standards and distribute the nation's oil wealth more evenly.
Those pledges jar with increasingly grim realities. Inflation is higher than when Mr Ahmadinejad took office 17 months ago, while unemployment, officially estimated at 12 per cent but probably much higher, has not improved.
Uncontrolled inflation has resulted in soaring food prices and has had a drastic effect on the housing market. Anecdotal evidence suggests house prices and rents in Tehran have risen 50 per cent in six months.
In a poignant development, the government plans to ration petrol to cut rising import costs incurred by Iran's lack of refinery capacity. The proposal gives an ironic twist to Mr Ahmadinejad's election promise to put the country's oil wealth "on people's tables".
The president's growing army of opponents blame the situation on the government's chaotic approach. The failure to deliver a budget bill on time is being attributed to Mr Ahmadinejad's decision to disband the management and planning organisation, a government agency responsible for setting spending priorities but which upset the president by opposing some of his costlier proposals. Critics believe Mr Ahmadinejad's place is at home and not in Latin America.
- (Guardian service)