Anaylsis: Shahroudi out Larijani in

Earlier I reported about the "retirement" of Shahroudi as the head of Iran's judiciary and the appointment of Larijani.

It is hard to tell whether Shahroudi genuinely wanted to retire or if he was forced out. He had been head of the judiciary for the last 10 years, but it seems strange to retire right in the middle of the greatest crisis in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Shahroudi is a hardliner, but he is an independent thinker in the sense that he has his own power since he has reached the status of Ayatollah. He would do things that he judged was best and would not take orders from others in the government. He has allowed the show trials to take place, but he has also called for the release of less important prisoners.

Moreover given the public outrage over the treatment of prisoners and the show trial, Shahroudi might have been forced out to try to present some change to what is going on. In other words it could imply Shahroudi has been doing a bad job and he is to blame for the problems in the justice system so he has been dismissed to resolve the situation.

Regardless of whether he was forced out, the fact that Larijani was appointed to replace him is important. Larijani is not the highest ranking cleric available and there certainly were more qualified people for the job. Yet the Larijani family is close to Khamenei with his brother being speaker of the Parliament. Perhaps his appointment is a sign that Khamenei wants to promote people who are loyal to him and not have an independent mindset.

We see that Ahmadinejad is trying to stack the government with loyalist to him and now Khamenei may be trying to put loyalists to the Supreme Leader in power. A split is developing in which these two forces within the regime might eventually collide. Also those hardliners who are independent thinking might find it hard to go there own way without having to pick one of these sides. We will have to see what happens.