The Mullahs vs. AhmedDinjad

It seems that the efforts to contain A.J. by the Mullah's has more to it then just him isolating Iran, at least the way Amir Taheri tells it.( Thanks Shoshi) His political foes within the Khomeinist system, especially the mullahs he defeated in last June’s elections, have conducted a massive campaign of character assassination against him. This has come in the form of leaks, sound bites, and outright attacks in the media and pubic gatherings. Two mullahs, both former presidents, are leading the campaign against Ahamdinejad. One, Hashemi Rafsanjani, has not yet recovered from the shock of losing to Ahmadinejad whom he had once dismissed as “lightweight” and “an upstart”. The other Muhammad Khatami is sore because Ahmadinejad cut the budget of the so-called “ dialogue of civilisations” that the former president had created to hoodwink the Western powers and the Arabs into believing that the regime was burying its Khomeinist ideology for good. Both mullahs are also worried about the audit that Ahmadinejad has ordered to find out how public finances were administered in the past 16 years, that is to say during the successive presidencies of Rafsanjani and Khatami. An initial report claims that some $120 billion out of a total of $600 billion in Iran’s oil income since 1979 is not “ properly accounted for”. The Khatami-Rafsanjani faction is also sore at the fact that many of its members have lost the plum jobs they had secured over the past 16 years. Many provincial officials have been dismissed and some 30 ambassadors are to be replaced. The purge started by Ahmadinejad has also spread to major public corporations that have been used as milking cows in a complex system of distributing favours. If the current trend continues it could pull the carpet from under the feet of the new elite of rich mullahs and their hangers on formed over the past quarter of a century. Some of the new rich produced by the Islamic revolution have already fled the country and are beginning to settle in various Western countries. Others are selling their assets, hence the collapse of the Tehran Stock Exchange, in a “ take the money and run” scenario. It always comes down to Money doesn't it? Heh. Read the whole thing.