AN INTENSIFYING LEADERSHIP STRUGGLE

With elections for Iran's powerful Assembly of Experts just months away - and with the post of Supreme Leader potentially hanging in the balance - the political jockeying between the contenders is heating up. During an early-June speech in the Iranian center of Qom, Expediency Council chairman (and former president) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was publicly heckled by supporters of the Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi. The disruption, which resulted in the arrest of several of Mesbah-Yazdi's followers, appears to have everything to do with politics; observers say that Mesbah-Yazdi, the spiritual mentor of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could be positioning himself for a power grab in the Assembly elections.

Mesbah-Yazdi may be in for a serious fight, however. In a thinly-veiled threat against the firebrand cleric, the Jomhiuri Islami newspaper, which is affiliated with the regime's security forces, has warned that unless he is careful Mesbah-Yazdi could end up meeting the same fate as previous political opponents of the regime, such as the Ayatollahs Shariatmadari and Montazeri. (Tehran Rooz, June 15, 2006)