Iran leaders in power struggle

As the rest of the Middle East is grappling with the "Arab Spring," Iran has been indulging in its own bitter battle for pre-eminence between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The battle has been raging over the past three weeks after Ahmadinejad's decision to fire the head of intelligence, Haidar Moslehi.

Khamenei intervened to insist the man be reinstated and published the letter telling him to do so. Ahmadinejad then refused to attend Cabinet meetings for 11 days, until the standoff was finally resolved on Monday, when the President returned to Cabinet, spoke in praise of the Supreme Leader but continued to fire off darts at those around him.

It is as much as anything a court struggle, a spat over precedence with few implications for any fundamental change in Iran.

This, is after all, a fight for power within the system. Ahmadinejad has offended not just Khamenei but Parliament and conservatives by pursuing a policy of putting his own men in positions of power.

Khamenei has responded by gathering clerics and conservatives alike to defend his constitutionally established position as final arbiter of affairs, civil and religious, in the country.

Ahmadinejad's challenge to theocratic rule (the velyat) and his attempt to wrestle power away from the clerics to presidential government is not an inconsiderable one.

President Ahmadinejad has clearly been weakened and may now end up as a lame-duck leader with two years to go before the presidential elections of 2013. But he still has a lot of energy and some support from his generation of war veterans.

Khamenei has asserted his authority but may also have weakened it by having to demonstrate it so publicly and with such effort. The liberals, still cowed by determined oppression, have no say in the fight.

So far Iran has managed to avoid getting sucked into the uprisings sweeping the rest of the Middle East, partly by acclaiming them as fulfilling its long-term calls for the overthrow of Western-supported autocracies.

The uprisings in its ally Syria and its support for Assad rule there, has badly undermined its right to moral leadership in the Middle East (which matters to it) and threatened its most important ally in the Arab world as well as its avenue of influence in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

In today's world of social networks and internet communication, it's difficult to believe that people in Iran, and especially the young, aren't influenced by what is happening elsewhere in the region.

The frustrations which have impelled so many to take to the streets elsewhere - corruption, political oppression and economic sclerosis - are mirrored in Iran too.

While the big beasts fight it out in Iran, there are deeper social forces moving below.

- Independent