Iranian vice president pressed to quit
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A top aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who had voiced a moderate stance toward Israel came under heavy pressure yesterday to resign, as government-controlled news outlets issued conflicting reports about whether he had already left his post.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A top aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who had voiced a moderate stance toward Israel came under heavy pressure yesterday to resign, as government-controlled news outlets issued conflicting reports about whether he had already left his post.
Meanwhile, hundreds took to the streets of the central city of Shiraz, chanting antigovernment slogans as Iranians prepared for another wave of demonstrations. Protests are expected tomorrow, the anniversary of the day in 1952 when security forces refused to fire on massive nationwide street protests in support of nationalist hero Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown as prime minister in a CIA-backed coup d'etat.
Two days after Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani made a momentous speech that Iranians say gave new life to the election protest movement stemming from allegations of voting fraud, Rafsanjani traveled to the holy city of Mashhad to confer with fellow senior Shiite Muslim leaders. The trip places him out of town on a day he had been due to meet with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other government leaders in Tehran.
Iranian authorities yesterday also freed on $100,000 bail senior British Embassy employee Iranian national Hossein Rassam, his lawyer and news agencies said. Rassam was arrested in late June and accused of being a mastermind of the post-election demonstrations.
The Pupils Association News Agency, an offshoot of the official Islamic Republic News Agency, reported yesterday that Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashai had quit, a report later contradicted by the government controlled al-Alam news channel.
The pressure to remove Mashai highlights Ahmadinejad's fragile political reality, in which he is more beholden to extremist groups and individuals who aided in the crackdown against his opponents after his recent controversy-marred reelection.
Mashai, whose daughter is married to Ahmadinejad's son, was publicly reprimanded last year after he said that Iran had no quarrel with the people of Israel, just its government, a position deemed too soft by Iran's anti-Israeli leaders. Ahmadinejad's decision to name him his first vice president sparked a furor among hard-line clergy and pressure groups, as well as among some reformists.