TEHRAN: Iran was plunged into fresh political turmoil on Sunday as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked his intelligence minister while his culture minister resigned saying the government has been weakened.
Ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 75, meanwhile on Sunday denied he and 70-year-old Khamenei are engaged in a power struggle. He pointed to more than half a century of friendship between himself and the supreme leader, which started long before the 1979 Islamic revolution.
“He is a progressive and forward-looking thinker in different subjects,” the former president said. “The propaganda by the foreign media who try to suggest that there is a power struggle in the top level of the regime is unfair injustice to the Islamic revolution,” Rafsanjani was quoted as saying.
No official reason was given for the sacking of Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, which comes just a few weeks before Ahmadinejad, re-elected for another four year term in a disputed vote last month, is due to finalize his new cabinet line-up.
Local news agencies had reported that four ministers had been dismissed but Ahmadinejad’s office denied this, saying only Ejeie had been given his marching orders.
One of those reported sacked, Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad-Hossein Saffar-Harandi, late Sunday announced he had resigned because of the confused reports about his “dismissal.”
“Unfortunately due to the recent events which shows the esteemed government’s weakness, I will no longer consider myself the minister of culture and will not show up at the ministry as of tomorrow,” he said in a letter of resignation, as carried by the Fars news agency.
The Mehr news agency meanwhile quoted an informed source as saying that intelligence minister Ejeie was sacked “following a verbal quarrel between the intelligence minister and the president in Wednesday’s cabinet meeting over the appointment of (Esfandiar Rahim) Mashaie.”
Two key opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, on Sunday laid down a fresh challenge to Ahmadinejad by seeking permission from the interior ministry to hold a ceremony to mourn those killed in the protests, the ISNA news agency said.
The organizers, it added, planned to hold the ceremony on Thursday in central Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, an open prayer venue where religious ceremonies are regularly held.
