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Two years after the disputed reelection of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Tehran streets that seethed with protest for months are quiet. But the silence belies the increasingly chaotic and rowdy struggle for control within the corridors of power - a contest in which those Iranians who risked their lives to protest two years ago have no clear favourite.

The key political contest today pits Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against Mr Ahmadinejad, the president behind whom (at great risk to the prestige of his office) the supreme leader threw his weight two years ago. The struggle has raged in the open for months, and it's far from certain that Mr Ahmadinejad will get to finish his current term of office.

The president, believing that Ayatollah Khamenei had become dependent on him after the 2009 election debacle, began to steadily and directly challenge the authority of the clergy the moment he returned to office.

Mr Ahmadinejad and his closest allies alarmed the clerics by seeking to refashion the state's ideology on nationalist - rather than Islamist - lines, and to shift its centre of political power from the clergy to the presidency.

The clerics are also outraged by Mr Ahmadinejad's religious populism. Appealing to a less educated poorer population, he claims a direct connection with Shiism's hidden 12th Imam, the messianic Mahdi, and as such claims that he doesn't need clerical sup... >>>