IRAN:The political authority of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suffered a serious blow yesterday after the country's most powerful figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sided with MPs by ordering him to supply cheap gas to villages suffering power cuts in an unexpectedly harsh winter, writes Robert Taitin Tehran.
In a humiliating rebuff, Iran's supreme leader, who has the final say over all state matters, ordered the enactment of a law requiring the government to provide $1 billion (€692 million) worth of gas supplies from emergency reserve funds.
Mr Ahmadinejad had refused to implement it, accusing parliament of exceeding its powers in passing the Bill in response to plunging temperatures and gas cuts that have left many areas without heating in Iran's coldest winter for years.
At least 64 people are reported to have died after gas supplies were cut in freezing temperatures. The cuts - in a country that has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves - have provoked public outrage and threaten to turn a mood of rumbling unhappiness into a winter of turmoil for Mr Ahmadinejad.
The president, who was elected on a platform of economic justice for the poor, rejected parliament's measure on budget grounds and blamed the gas cuts on neighbouring Turkmenistan, which has cut supplies to Iran over a payment dispute.
But in a letter to the parliament's speaker, Ayatollah Khamenei unceremoniously overruled him, writing: "All legal legislation that has gone through [ the required] procedures stipulated in the constitution is binding for all branches of power."
The intervention is the latest in a series of recent signals that Ayatollah Khamenei is losing patience with a president to whom he once showed staunch loyalty.
The supreme leader once described Mr Ahmadinejad's government as Iran's best since the 1979 Islamic revolution, but in a speech this month in the central city of Yazd, he conspicuously refrained from praising it.
Instead, he put it on a par with previous administrations, saying that "the government has certain unique characteristics, but like any other government there are mistakes and shortcomings".
Reports from inside Iran suggest Ayatollah Khamenei has grown disenchanted with Mr Ahmadinejad's economic record, which has been marked by surging inflation and dramatic rises in food and housing costs.
Such misgivings have been given added piquancy by a report last month from 16 US intelligence agencies concluding that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. The report appeared to ease the threat of US military strikes against Iran, which Mr Ahmadinejad had used to clamp down on domestic dissent.
The diminishing external threat appears to have emboldened the president's opponents in the run-up to parliamentary election on March 14th. It may also have removed the need for Ayatollah Khamenei to keep his displeasure quiet.
- (Guardian service)