Mashaei Criticizes "The Man"

After a flurry of protest from the hardliner establishment, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei did not become Ahmadinejad's first VP. Instead he became Chief of Staff to the irritation of many in the regime who do not like him.

The whole Mashaei incident showed a huge split between the hardliners in the regime and those loyalists to Ahmadinejad who have a different agenda. Well Mashaei is opening old wounds with his latest comments:

"Of the 24 million Ahmadinejad voters, 20 million are critical of the system. These 20 million people are even more critical of the system than the 13 million Mousavi voters, since those 13 million only question the Ahmadinejad administration, whereas these 20 million are saying No to all the past years before Ahmadinejad."

Mashaei is not saying that Ahmadinejad only really got 4 million votes and the other 20 million are fraudulent or anything like that. What he is saying is that 20 million of the votes Ahmadinejad got were out of frustration with the regime. In other words Ahmadinejad is an agent of change within the regime that is trying to fight the corrupt establishment. It harkens back to Ahmadinejad's original populist rhetoric of taking on the system on behalf of the people.

Mashaei is arguing that leading reformists such as Mousavi and Karroubi are the old school members of the regime which the public does not like. However this category also includes Khamenei and the clerics around him who have been around for 30 years. Ahmadinejad is the new kid on the block who is really trying to shake things up. According to Mashaei, Mousavi voters don't like Ahmadinejad, but Ahmadinejad voters don't like the whole history of the regime before Ahmadinejad including the years with Mousavi.

The interesting point is that Mashaei is openly stating what many hardliners fear: Ahmadinejad is trying to spread his power within the regime and cultivate his cult own personality. Ahmadinejad and the old school hardliners seem close, but deep down they have major disagreements. Ahmadinejad might temporarily align himself with the other hardliners to fight off the reformists, but deep down Ahmadinejad wants to fundamentally change the regime in a new direction.

It also seems that Mashaei is bitter over the treatment he got at the hands of hardliners in the regime. He wants to argue that the "mandate endorsement" Ahmadinejad supposedly got from the people does not mean the people also support the other hardliners. In this way, he is striking back at the hardliner establishment and warning them that Ahmadinejad will not be their puppet. It is hard to tell if Ahmadinejad feels the same way as Mashaei, but the two are fairly close. One thing is for certain, it seems the split between the Ahmadinejad camp and the other hardliners is widening.

p.s. Mashaei is Ahmadinejad's Biden

Even though Mashaei was stopped from becoming Ahmadinejad's VP and is only his chief of staff, he is remarkably similar to the American VP in one respect. Mashaei seems to be a gaffe machine saying things the President does not want him to. Take this video in which he says the following:

"The age of Islamism is over. It's not that Islamism doesn't exist or isn't growing. Islam exists but its time is up. The age of horseback riding is over now, though horses exist, and so do riders. . . . Of course, it isn't completely finished, but it's getting there."