Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 'under a spell', Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says


The former spiritual mentor to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly accused his protégé of being "under a spell" as a constitutional crisis engulfs the country.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks in Tehran today Photo: REUTERS

The president has taken the unprecedented step of refusing to obey orders handed down by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, less than two years after the pair formed a powerful political alliance to defeat anti-regime protests that swept the country.

Regime elements are taking sides, but the president is looking increasingly isolated as the Revolutionary Guard and the clerical establishment swing behind the Supreme Leader. Even Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, whose apocalyptic vision of Shia Islam Mr Ahmadinejad is thought to follow, has joined in the criticism.

"I've told some of my close friends that I am more than 90 per cent certain that he has been put under a spell," Ayatollah Yazdi told reporters. "This is not natural at all. "No sane person does such things unless his free will has been taken away."

The falling-out of the president and the Supreme Leader, who is supposed to have the final say in all important matters, is the most unexpected development in Iranian politics since the 2009 election and in some ways since the Iranian revolution.

The two men, both conservatives, had together pursued a hard line against the unrest following his re-election and the moderate opposition leaders they accused of being behind it.



But Ayatollah Khamenei is vigorously opposed to Mr Ahmadinejad's closest confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie. He succeeded in stopping his appointment a vice-president, only to see him made chief of staff instead.
Last month, Mr Ahmadinejad sacked his intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, after discovering Mr Mashaie's telephone was being tapped. After refusing at first to obey orders to reinstate him, he then went on an eight-day strike, refusing to turn up to cabinet meetings.
When they resumed, he sacked three more ministers without seeking approval.
The accusation that Mr Mashaie has put the president under a spell is more than rhetorical: friends of Mr Mashaie have already been arrested for sorcery. "I do not know if it is hypnotism, a spell or relations with yogis. But there is something wrong," Ayatollah Yazdi said.



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