Ahmadinejad's trouble at home

last updated 8 January 2015

"Perhaps Iran is ready for change it can believe in, too," said Rebecca Frankel in Foreign Policy online. The country's parliament "canned" Interior Minister Ali Kordan on Tuesday over the objections of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The "bruhaha" should weaken Ahmadinejad ahead of elections in June as his standing was already "shaky," thanks to his inability to handle a financial crisis and falling oil prices.

To say that Ahmadinejad is on shaky ground is an understatement, said Nazila Fathi in The New York Times. Kordan, whose offense was faking a doctorate degree from Oxford, wasn't the first minister to be forced out, and if Ahmadinejad loses another he'll face a vote of confidence for his entire 21-member cabinet. And Ahmadinejad's inability to save Kordan suggests he's losing allies fast.

Ahmadinejad has accused parliament of trying to sabotage his presidency, said Anne Penketh in Britain's The Independent, and he's probably right. This is just the latest eruption in the "bitter rivalry between the firebrand Iranian president and the speaker of the parliament," Ali Larijani, who ran against Ahmadinejad in 2005. Now everyone's curious about who'll challenge Ahmadinejad next, or whether he'll run for re-election at all.