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Is Ahmadinejad Scapegoat For Iran’s Economy?

Iran’s Supreme Leader is blaming the president for the country's deepening political and economic crisis, writes Mehdi Khalaji. Hoping to avoid accountability for the regime’s failed policies, Khamenei’s sole use for Ahmadinejad is as a fall guy. The next president will assume much less authority, predicts the author.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei greets election officials as he presents his identification papers to cast his ballot in the parliamentary election in Tehran  March 2, 2012.  Polls opened on Friday for a parliamentary election in Iran that will test the popularity of the clerical establishment at a time of a standoff with the West over the country's nuclear programme.  REUTERS/Caren Firouz  (IRAN - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was responsible for bringing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005 and paid a hefty price for keeping him in that job in 2009. These days, however, the Supreme Leader has chosen to make the president a scapegoat for Iran’s deepening political and economic crisis.

While Khamenei is the ultimate decision-maker in the Islamic Republic, he hopes to avoid accountability for the regime’s failed policies. In the wake of the protests that followed the disputed 2009 vote, the Supreme Leader stood firmly behind Ahmadinejad, primarily to ensure the marginalization of reformists and long-standing icons such as former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Now that the power and influence of the first generation of revolutionary leaders has waned, Khamenei’s sole use for Ahmadinejad is to pin the entirety of social and economic woes on him.

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