By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's
president appointed his divisive confidant to a high-profile post
Saturday in a move widely viewed as an attempt to boost the close aide's
profile ahead of his expected candidacy in next year's presidential
elections.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad named
Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei the head of the secretariat of the Non-Aligned
Movement, the bloc of developing nations that Iran took over the
leadership of this year. The post raises Mashaei's political clout and
gives him much-needed international experience.
Ahmadinejad cannot run in
Iran's presidential elections in June because of term limits, and he is
widely believed to be grooming Mashaei, whose daughter is married to the
president's son, as his successor when he steps down in 2013.
The decision to promote
Mashaei is seen as a challenge to Iran's powerful hardliners, and is
likely to inflame the simmering political dispute with presidential
elections on the horizon. The hardliners denounce Mashaei as the head of
a "deviant current" that they say is trying to undermine the country's
ruling Islamic system and elevate the values of pre-Islamic Persia and
promote nationalism at the expense of clerical rule.
Mashaei is believed to have
been at the root of a bitter political battle between Ahmadinejad and
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over the choice of
intelligence chief in 2011. The president boycotted Cabinet meetings for
11 days - an unprecedented show of disrespect to Iran's leader, who
hardliners believe is answerable only to God - but finally backed down.
The challenge prompted many
of Ahmadinejad's erstwhile conservative supporters to switch sides and
join his opponents, thus weakening the powerbase of hardliners that the
president depended on to secure his disputed re-election in 2009.
Ahmadinejad has paid dearly
for challenging the ruling system. Dozens of the president's aides have
been arrested or driven into the political margins. Hardline media also
began to smear Mashaei, the president's protege, with some critics even
claiming that Mashaei conjured black magic spells to fog Ahmadinejad's
mind.
In his unusually long
decree Saturday announcing Mashaei's appointment, Ahmadinejad employed
an unusually flattering prose to praise his aide, calling him a "pious,
patient man with a pure heart and crystal thoughts."
"I consider your excellency
a competent, wise, honest man," Ahmadinejad said in a statement posted
on his office's website. "Knowing and working with you is a divine gift
and a great honor for me."
In contrast, Ahmadinejad
released a very short separate statement to appoint Hasan Mousavi as
Mashaei's successor to the post of the president's chief of staff.
Mashaei was at the heart of
the dispute from the first day of Ahmadinejad's re-election in 2009
when the president appointed him as his first vice president. Khamenei
quickly stepped in and pressured Ahmadinejad to drop the appointment,
and Mashaei was gone within the week in a stinging embarrassment to the
president.
Ahmadinejad has widely been
quoted in Iranian media as privately saying that it would be an honor
for him to serve as first vice president under Mashaei.
Even with the president's
support, it is unclear whether Mashaei, if he chooses to run, will make
it onto the presidential ballot. All candidates in the elections must be
approved by the hardline Guardian Council, a body whose key members are
handpicked by Khamenei.
Many conservatives say
Mashaei will likely be barred from running but others believe it could
be a tough challenge for the ruling system to disqualify him from the
vote.
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2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
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