LOS ANGELES TIMES: The warning over the president's defiance highlights the rift among Iran's conservatives. Meanwhile, the government says Mousavi supporters can't gather at a mosque Thursday to honor protest victims.
Reporting from Beirut -- Political hard-liners warned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday that he could be deposed like past Iranian leaders if he continued to defy the country's supreme religious leader.
The implied threat was the latest evidence of the rift within Iran's conservative camp and could serve to further sap the authority of a president already considered illegitimate by reformists.
The Islamic Society of Engineers, a political group close to parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, warned in an open letter to Ahmadinejad that he could suffer the same fate as Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who was deposed in 1953 in a CIA-backed coup with the acquiescence of the clergy.
The letter also cites the experience of President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was ousted in 1981 and fled the country after he fell out with the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Both leaders had been elected by huge margins.
"It seems you want to be the sole speaker and do not want to hear other voices," the group's letter says, noting that recent actions by Ahmadinejad have frustrated his own supporters. "Therefore it is our duty to convey to you the voice of the people." >>> Borzou Daragahi | Wednesday, July 29, 2009
BBC: Ahmadinejad Riles Powerful Allies
With the row over Iran's disputed election still bitterly dividing the country, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now in a new dispute with fellow conservatives.
It is an argument every bit as heated as the election row, and potentially even more damaging to the president.
Just over a month after the election, Mr Ahmadinejad provoked fury amongst his fellow conservatives by promoting one of his vice-presidents, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, to the post of first vice-president.
The job would make him the president's second in command, the man who would take over if Mr Ahmadinejad was run over by a Tehran bus.
As Mr Ahmadinejad must have known it would, the appointment infuriated conservatives.
Mr Mashaie had already angered the establishment by suggesting that Iran was friends with the Israeli people, even though he shared the Islamic Republic's hatred of the state of Israel. >>> By Jon Leyne, BBC News | Monday, July 27, 2009
