Free Republic

There is much turbulence in the Iranian government today. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not happy that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi last month. He has now given Ahmadinejad an ultimatum to either re-instate Moslehi or resign. A sullen Ahmadinejad caught a bad case of the “blue flu,” and stopped showing up for work. According to the BBC, one of his aides wrote a blog post that said the Iranian president “is in pain, as if a thorn is stuck in his throat… he cannot take it out or swallow in.” Try that one the next time...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replaces Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as chief of staff. Hard-liners mistrusted Mashaei for his unorthodox views about religion... amid rising calls for political change throughout the Middle East. Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, was not only his top advisor, but also an in-law and comrade during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. He will retain his lesser posts. Mashaei's unorthodox views about religion, including the role of the clergy and the preeminence of ancient Iranian cultural values over Islam, earned him the mistrust of hard-liners in the Iranian establishment but also won Ahmadinejad no friends among a...