President Ahmadinejad has deepened the rift in the Iranian regime with a scarcely veiled threat to expose corruption in the Revolutionary Guards if his enemies seek to arrest his closest aides.
He has accused unnamed government agencies of using their own dockyards to import goods without paying customs duties. He singled out the illegal import of cigarettes, saying that the market was so huge that it attracted not only international criminals but “our own smuggling brothers”.
The Revolutionary Guards control much of the Iranian economy and are renowned for their black market activities. Mr Ahmadinejad’s target was so obvious that Mohammed Ali Jafari, the head of the elite force, was forced to deny that it used its military docks for corrupt activities.
The threat was the latest development in the power struggle between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and a President who was once his protégé but has increasingly asserted his independence.
In an attempt to undermine Mr Ahmadinejad, his inner circle have been attacked by the Supreme Leader’s hardline allies in the clergy, Parliament and security forces. They have been accused of corruption, political and religious “deviancy”, and of casting a spell over the President.
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Several have been arrested or forced from office but the chief target is Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the Chief of Staff whose son is married to the President’s daughter. Mr Ahmadinejad is said to be grooming Mr Mashaei, 51, to succeed him in 2013, but hardliners regard him as a subversive thinker who favours Iranian nationalism over Islamic values, would sideline the clergy, is soft on Israel and America and harbours liberal views.
At a press conference last week Mr Ahmadinejad was asked about the arrest of his aides and he delivered a warning. He planned to stay silent, he said, but added: “I am duty-bound to defend the Cabinet, and the Cabinet is our red line.”
State television broadcast the press conference without that key line, prompting Mr Ahmadinejad’s aides to post the uncut version on his website. To challenge the Revolutionary Guards suggests that Mr Ahmadinejad is either confident — believing that Ayatollah Khamenei spent so much defending his rigged re-election in 2009 that he cannot sack him — or reckless.
The Revolutionary Guards were used to crush the opposition protests after that fraudulent ballot.