At the funeral ceremony of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mother in the city of Qom on Feb. 22, supporters of the former Iranian president chanted, “On the life of any real man, Ahmadinejad will return.” The return of Ahmadinejad, whether in the 2016 parliamentary elections or back in the president’s seat in 2017, is always a hot topic in Iranian media and leads to wild speculation and analysis.
Sadegh Zibakalam, an outspoken Tehran University professor who is a supporter of President Hassan Rouhani’s negotiations with the West and a target of Iran’s hard-liners, wrote an interesting column in Shargh daily about the likelihood of Ahmadinejad’s return to politics. Rather than focusing on whether or not Ahmadinejad has the political clout or the blessing of the supreme leader to return to politics, he focused on some of the institutional problems within the Iranian executive branch.