Is Ahmadinejad’s Stock Really Tumbling?
January 24, 2008 by pulkit
There are reports of a rift between Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei, the spiritual patriarch of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But then there are two theories doing the rounds. One takes the signs of discord on face value and the other sees it as a hemmy pretense to fool the world.
Anyway, keeping theories aside for a moment, Khamenei implicitly lambasted Ahmadinejad by ordering him to implement a gas-sector law, which Ahmadinejad had repelled. The particular law had become a bone of contention between Ahmadinejad and the Iranian parliament.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly intervened on Monday to end a dispute between Mr Ahmadinejad and parliament by ordering the president to implement a gas-sector law. [source]
Some other analysts believe that the NIE report has led to a domestic dip in Ahmadinejad’s stock. Because many Iranians might have been led to believe that the very nuclear program Ahmadinejad boasts of, as it were a national treasure, is in cold-storage. He certainly has lost the support of the Iranian intellectuals and economists, who have often spelt their dislike for his disastrous economic policies.
Now it is hard to digest that Khamenei has all of a sudden lost faith in Ahmadinejad, a man he has backed to the hilt. Ahmadinejad might have fallen out with the moderate clerics and the economists. As for the NIE report, forget it. The NIE report can’t possibly have an impact on the Iranian masses, not until it pervades the Iranian propaganda wall.
