How Secure Is Ahmadinejad?

I argued here that hardliners in Iran were not too thrilled with Ahmadinejad and expected him to be their puppet which he clearly was not going to be.

Well Reza Aslan has a proactive new article in which he argues that Ahmadinejad's foes within the parliament may try to plan his overthrow. Essentially there are four different factions within the regime all competing for power.

Obviously we know about the reformists and their constant opposition to the regime. Then there are the loyalist to Ahmadinejad and his personal cult of support which is fairly strong. The two wild cards are the pragmatic conservatives and those hardliners more loyal to the Khamenei than Ahmadinejad.

The pragmatic conservatives are stuck in the middle because they do not know if they should fear Ahmadinejad and his erratic policies more or fear the liberal reformist alternative. At this point, it seems like they are closer to the reformists although they are not coming out with bold statements against the regime. That means the deciding factor will be hardliners who are not loyal to Ahmadinejad. They allowed him to steal the election because they feared the reformists more than him. Yet how far will they let him go and are they willing to somehow remove him from office if he does not take orders from Khamenei. It is this possibility that Aslan explores in his article:

"The controversy over the elections has brought tension between the president and parliament to the surface. Out of 300 MPs, 180 skipped his election celebration. Last week, more than 200 of them signed an open letter demanding that Ahmadinejad “correct his behavior.” This was in response to Ahmadinejad’s deliberately ignoring a directive from Iran's supreme leader to sack his nominee for first vice president, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie. After four days of refusing to budge, Ahmadinejad fired Mashaie then immediately rehired him as chief of staff, arguably a more important position, and one that does not need parliamentary approval.

The current speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani, is a conservative and ally of the supreme leader who has not hidden his utter contempt for Ahmadinejad (it should be noted that Ahmadinejad beat Larijani in the 2005 presidential elections, despite the fact that Khamenei had endorsed Larijani). That might explain why Larijani has decided to form an investigative committee to look into accusations of prisoner abuse carried out by Ahmadinejad’s cronies in the Revolutionary Guard during the post-election crackdown. That means that the parliament will be investigating Ahmadinejad at the same time that it is supposed to be approving his cabinet.

Ahmadinejad’s foes in the parliament—of which he has many—will likely try to use their confirmation powers to frustrate his attempts to put his administration together in a timely fashion, in hopes that gridlock will force the supreme leader to institute a state of emergency and remove Ahmadinejad from office."