While the number of arrests grows, the threat to impeach Ahmadi-nejad disappeared this week when 30 Majlis deputies who had signed a summons to bring him before the Majlis withdrew their names.
The president, who has appeared neutered since he threw a hissy-fit in late April over the Supreme Leader’s order to keep the intelligence minister in office, went back on the offensive late last month with an attack on the Pasdaran for importing goods outside the customs system. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.) But those allegations seem to have sunk into black hole. There has been little reaction. Most people believe the charges, which are not new, but no one seems to want to take on the Pasdaran.
Persecutor General Gho-lam-Hossain Mohseni-Ejai announced the arrests of more officials Monday for being part of the “deviant current,” the shorthand being used for the crowd closest to the president.
Most of those arrested in the past had been charged with corruption or morals offenses. But Ejai said some of those most recently arrested have been charged with violating national security as well.
Ejai named none of those arrested. He didn’t even give any numbers. But he said some worked for the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) and one worked for the national museum, which comes under ICHTO.
(ICHTO announced the next day that it had fired National Museum Director Azadeh Ardakan. It did not say why.)
ICHTO was headed until last year by Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, now the president’s chief of staff, and then by Hamid Baqai, who was forced out of that office last month. Mashai and Baqai are two of the men closest to Ahmadi-nejad and head the target list of the president’s enemies. Most of the office-holders arrested in recent weeks are said to be associates of those two men. Many have been accused of “sorcery” and “witchcraft,” according to newspaper accounts.
The pressure on Ahmadi-nejad eased a bit, however, as the effort to call him before the Majlis for a vote of confidence collapsed.
A total of 100 deputies or just over one-third of the membership of the Majlis had signed a summons that would have brought Ahmadi-nejad to the chamber and forced a vote.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has made clear he did not support such an effort and the Majlis Presiding Board said outright that it did not want any such vote. Despite that, it took two weeks for the Majlis leadership to twist arms and get enough deputies to withdraw their names from the summons to make it invalid.
Article 89 of the Constitution requires that that one-third of the deputies or 97 sign the summons. The proponents had only barely exceeded that number so it was surprising that it took the leadership two weeks to get enough members to back off. That suggests the disgust with Ahmadi-nejad is not just broad but very, very deep.
The summons listed 10 topics for which deputies wished to query Ahmadi-nejad:
• His refusal to transfer to the Tehran Metro the funds appropriated by he Majlis for the Metro. Until recently, the Metro was run by a son of former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, one of the president’s major critics.
• His refusal to set up a Ministry of Sports and Youth, which was created in January with a deadline for it to be operating set for June 6. Ahmadi-nejad finally gave in and set up the ministry this month.
• The lack of clarity in the official unemployment rates, referring to differing numbers that have been released. This is a problem, however, that dates back years before Ahmadi-nejad became president.
• Explanations about spending from the cultural budget, where there have been allegations that Mashai and Baqai used funds for political purposes.
• The execution of the phaseout of government subsidies, where the law called for gasoline subsidies to be phased out over five years but Ahmadi-nejad dropped them in one fell swoop last December. The law also called for larger welfare payments to poorer members of society, but Ahmadi-nejad is paying the same amount to everyone, rich and poor.
• The president’s 11-day delay in accepting the edict from the Supreme Leader overturning Ahmadi-nejad’s firing of Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi.
• The “humiliating” dismissal last December of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was fired while he was in Senegal meeting with the president there.
• Ahmadi-nejad’s comment that the Majlis no longer holds much power.
• The president’s lack of enthusiasm for enforcing the dress code.
• The promotion of an “Iranian school of thought,” as opposed to Islamic thought, by many of those around Ahmadi-nejad and his refusal to distance himself from that “deviant current.”