Ahmadinejad Names Mashaie Head of NAM Secretariat

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today named his chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as the head of the secretariat of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Iran currently holds NAM’s rotating presidency. The high profile position will give Mashaie much-needed international experience and exposure if he were to run for presidency in 2013. Due to term limits, Ahmadinejad will be ineligible to run next year.

Iran’s hardliners consider Mashaie an archenemy. They accuse him of leading the “Deviationist Movement” within the Islamic Republic. His views on Iranian nationalism as an important element of Iran’s political culture does not bode well with the governing clerics who prefer to rule as the representatives of Shia’s Hidden Imam on earth.

After his reelection in 2009, Ahmadinejad named Mashaie his first vice president (principle deputy to president). The move angered conservatives and Supreme Leader Khamenei ordered Ahmadinejad to dump Mashaei. He reluctantly obeyed the order, but named Mashaie his chief of staff.

Today, Ahmadinejad praised Mashaie in his letter appointing him to NAM's top administrative position.

“I consider your excellency a competent, wise, honest man,” Ahmadinejad said. “Knowing and working with you is a divine gift and a great honor for me.” (President.ir, 1 December)

Ahmadinejad appointed Hasan Mousavi, one of his vice presidents, as his new chief of staff.

File photo: Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei (IRNA)

Majlis Elections in Iran

Sharp Turn to the Right

In the second round of the parliamentary elections taking place in the country today, 65 of 290 seats are being contested. The traditional conservatives loyal to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the ultraconservatives and fundamentalists loyal to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi are expected to dominate the Ninth Majlis, making it the most right-wing Majlis in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Qolam Ali Haddad Adel, Khamenei’s senior advisor and father-in-law to his powerful son Mojtaba, is expected to be chosen as the speaker of the new Majlis. President Ahmadinejad and his circle of supporters seem to be the biggest losers in these elections.

Iran Parliamentary Elections Set for March 2012

The campaign season for Iran parliamentary elections will begin on 24 December when the candidates will have one week to register to compete for Majlis seats. The hopefuls, however, will be vetted by the government’s election supervisory body, the Guardian Council, which will release its own list of approved candidates to compete in polls, now scheduled to be held on 2 March 2012.

The 2012 elections for the new Majlis (the Ninth Majlis) are the first since the controversial June 2009 presidential race that gave rise to the Green Movement. It is not clear if the reformists would field any candidates for the upcoming elections. The leaders of the Greens, Mr. Mousavi and Ayatollah Karrubi, have been kept isolated and under house arrest for more than eight months. Many other movement activists are in prison or freed on bail, unable to run. It is not also clear if the Guardian Council would even allow members of the opposition who were not jailed to run for Majlis.

Ironically, the supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself a beneficiary of the controversial 2009 elections, might themselves be vetted out of running for Majlis by the Guardian Council. They are branded “deviationists” by the conservatives who have called for the arrest of their political leader, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff and son-in-law.

In some conservative circles, however, there are voices favoring tolerance towards the participation of a select group of reformist candidates. They fear a “one-party” election, conservative candidates running against other conservative candidates, would split their ranks and could lead to victories by the “deviationists,” if they were allowed to remain in race.

Iran’s hardliners face off over cabinet – The Christian Science Monitor

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (r.) and Esfandiar Mashaie
Tehran. 22 July 2009. Photo by Reuters’ Yalda Moaiery.

Printed on 26 July 2009 edition of CSM

In a column on Sunday 26 July 2009 edition of The Christian Science Monitor, Iason Athanasiadis examines the growing tensions among Iran’s hardliners. President Ahmadinejad fired his intelligence minister on Sunday after being forced to take back the nomination of Eskandar Mashaie, a close advisor, as his first VP. Athanasiadis also quotes this blogger on the balance of fear between the government and the opposition.

"A delicate and prolonged period of balance of fear has started between the government and the opposition," says Nader Uskowi, a Washington-based Iran analyst and president of Uskowi Associates. "After enduring a month of relentless attack by government forces, the opposition reaffirmed its strength, but the government will hang onto power with support from the armed forces and a segment of the more traditional and rural population" [CSM, 26 July].

Iran: The Growing Tensions within the Conservative Camp

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired his intelligence minister on Sunday after heated oral arguments between the two during a Wednesday night cabinet meeting in Tehran. Qolam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the cleric intelligence chief, reportedly accused Ahmadinejad of disloyalty to the country’s supreme leader for not withdrawing quickly enough the controversial nomination of Esfandiar Mashaie to be his first VP. Ahmadinejad has since withdrawn the nomination, but has renamed Mashaie as his chief of staff, another top post in the administration.

Ejei’s dismissal as intelligence minister came amid open criticism of Ahmadinejad by the Maj. Gen. Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed for his delay in complying with an order from Khamenei to drop his pick for vice president.

The conservative backlash intensified today by the announcement that Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi, the minister of culture and former editor of ultar-conservative influential daily Kayhan, would not be returning to Ahmadinejad’s adminstration for his second term.