TEHRAN // While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is barred by the country's constitution from running for a third term, the Iranian president may seek to retain power by urging his controversial chief of staff, Esfandiar Mashaie, to stand in Iran's next presidential elections, analysts say.
This plan has echoes in Russia, these observers say. When constitutionally mandated term limits prevented Vladimir Putin from seeking another term in office in 2008, his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, stepped in and won election. While Mr Putin assumed the largely ceremonial post of prime minister, most Russians and outsiders today believe real power in the Kremlin still resides with him.
"The president's unwavering loyalty and support for Mashaie in the face of all recent attacks on the man makes sense only if we accept that he wants his old friend to take his place as president so that he can himself stay as close to power as possible, somewhat like Russia's Putin has done since Medvedev was elected," said an analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff are indeed close. Mr Mashaie has angered Iran's conservative religious establishment many times by expressing what they consider unorthodox views. But in nearly every case, Mr Ahmadinejad has stepped in to defend the man many consider the president's most trusted ally.
Last year, Mr Ahmadinejad created a stir by ignoring a direct order from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to cancel Mr Mashaie's appointment as first vice president. Eventually, he let Mr Mashaie resign, then quickly appointed him chief of staff. To widespread dismay, Mr Mashaie has frequently voiced what many clerics, politicians and analysts here deem unorthodox views. His recent remarks about "various interpretations of Islam" and the superiority of "the Iranian school" were controversial, tarnishing Mr Ahmadinejad's status among conservatives and hardliners.
To the orthodox religious establishment, these remarks, made to expatriate Iranians during a seminar this month, were excessively nationalistic. They regard Mr Mashaie's brand of nationalism as blasphemy. On Friday, many of the supreme leader's appointed prayer leaders joined forces to criticise Mr Mashaie in their sermons. Several urged Mr Ahmadinejad to dismiss his chief of staff. Even a top military official reacted. Gen Hassan Firouzabadi, the head of the armed forces' joint command, called the remarks made by Mr Mashaie deviant. He charged that inviting "theoreticians of soft war and CIA spies to the country" - probably a reference to Housang Amir-Ahmadi, an Iranian living in the United States who is known for his efforts to broker direct talks with the US - to participate in a seminar with expatriate Iranians was "an act against national security".
The military chief's outburst was followed by another from Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who is thought to have been Mr Ahmadinejad's religious mentor, at least during his early days as politician and president. He also enjoys huge influence among the state-affiliated clerics of Qom, the country's religious capital. "Certain people who are shamelessly promoting the Iranian school in the place of the Islamic school are outsiders, not insiders, and we must be alert," the senior ayatollah said in a speech to military commanders last week.
"We have no brotherhood pact with anyone. If a person deviates from Islam, we'll first give a warning and then raise the stick to hit," he said. A few days earlier, the ayatollah had warned about a "new sedition", not by the reformist opposition, but by some among the "value-abiding" forces, a veiled reference to the president and others in power. Neither the senior military chief nor the senior cleric criticised Mr Ahmadinejad directly. Nonetheless, the president rose to Mr Mashaie's full defence.
"Mr Mashaie is my chief of staff. I have complete trust in him," Mr Ahmadinejad said last week. For his part, Mr Mashaie has not been intimidated, either. He has threatened to sue Gen Firouzabadi. For all the similarities between the politics of succession in Russia and Iran, one observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, sees an important difference. "Mashaie seems to be playing the role of the mentor like Putin, the man with the vision, rather than being the protégé like Medvedev. Ahmadinejad has an ideology he wants to further at any cost and that quite unorthodox ideology seems to have been fostered by Mashaie. So, why not him?"
In Mr Mashaie's comments to expatriate Iranians, one analyst even saw hints of a campaign strategy taking shape: "A declaration of nationalism was meant to appeal to the participants of the seminar, and quite possibly to many favouring nationalism outside those walls," the analyst said. "Ahmadinejad won his first term by appealing to the poor who saw his rival [Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani] as the embodiment of corruption. A certain brand of nationalism in conjunction with unorthodox religious beliefs may be on the agenda to win the next elections for Mashaie".
msinaiee@thenational.ae