How do you say “lame duck” in Farsi? (According to Google’s translation service, the answer would be: علیل وناتوان) And in a twist worthy of Game of Thrones, less than two years after his disputed reelection and the brutal crackdown on opponents that followed, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been reduced to a علیل وناتوان. And that’s just about where the clerical Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei — who abandoned the political neutrality required of his office in 2009 to hail Ahmadinejad as the candidate whose views were closest to his own — wants the president.
On Tuesday, Iran’s parliament moved closer to impeaching Ahmadinejad, after striking down the appointment of one of his allies to the post of Deputy Foreign Minister, and opening impeachment proceedings against the President’s handpicked foreign minister, Ali Akhbar Salehi. And that’s just the latest barrage of slings and arrows Ahmadinejad has suffered in the legislature, which just this week included canceling his merging of the ministries of transportation and housing, and forbidding his merging of the oil and energy ministries. Similar attacks have been coming for months in what has become open season on the controversial president within the corridors of power — even while those that opposed him on the streets, and even at the hustings, remain on lock down.
It’s not as if the Majlis, Iran’s elected parliament (although both elections and legislation are limit… >>>
