Iranians see Ahmadinejad as disconnected from alleged plot

By Thomas Erdbrink
The Washington Post

TEHRAN — As Iranians struggled Wednesday to comprehend an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, analysts here agreed that even if U.S. charges of official Iranian involvement were true, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government likely had nothing to do with the scheme.

The security organizations that the United States says were behind the alleged plot — the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite special operations branch, the Quds Force — are well beyond Ahmadinejad’s influence. And leaders associated with them have played key roles in attacking Ahmadinejad during his recent rift with powerful Shiite Muslim clerics and commanders who helped bring him to power.
Amid new levels of infighting within Iran’s opaque leadership, Ahmadinejad at present wields no influence over the country’s two main intelligence and security organizations: the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are firmly under the control of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Even against the backdrop of this power struggle, Iranian dissidents and analysts are hard-pressed to come up with reasons for any of Iran’s leaders to undertake such a risky plot. Even if carried out successfully, it probably would have been quickly blamed on Iran, the analysts noted.

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday accused “elements of the Iranian government” of conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador. In addition to an Iranian American who was arrested in New York, officials named two alleged Iranian conspirators as Quds Force officials: Gholam Shakuri and Abdul Reza Shahlai. Shakuri, who was identified as a deputy to Shahlai, was charged in the case. Both remain at large. U.S. officials declined to say how high in the Iranian leadership they think the conspiracy goes.

Iranians interviewed Wednesday suggested various possible culprits in the alleged plot, ranging from the CIA to Revolutionary Guard elements to a rogue faction within Iran’s power structure.

“There are those within the Guards with some degree of independence,” said Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist critical of the government. “But I cannot point any fingers in this bizarre plot that only hurts Iran.”

What is clear, analysts said, is that the Islamic Republic’s security organizations are currently a black hole for the Ahmadinejad government, which is increasingly under fire from Intelligence Ministry officials as well as Revolutionary Guard commanders and hard-line Shiite clerics.

These critics recently called Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff and main adviser, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a “tumor” that needs to be cut out of the government. They have also threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against Ahmadinejad if he refuses to cut ties with advisers they describe as a “deviant current” bent on undermining the influence of the country’s ruling clerics.

Ahmadinejad publicly fell from grace in April when he tried to fire Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi, a Shiite cleric, but was forced to back down when Khamenei, the supreme leader, reinstated him.