The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told an academic gathering last week that “changing Iran into a parliamentary system” in which voters no longer elected a president would not be a problem. His words were widely seen as the latest blow in a battle that began in April when Mr. Ahmadinejad crossed a line by openly feuding with Ayatollah Khamenei — who has the final word in affairs of state — over cabinet appointments.

Some analysts see the power struggle as a legacy of the disputed 2009 presidential election, when accusations of rigging — and months of street protests — deepened rifts and reduced the supreme leader’s support among the public and the political elite. Although Mr. Ahmadinejad had the supreme leader’s support in both the 2009 and 2005 elections and the two men were long seen as ideological soul mates, the president has tried to build an independent power base, and many conservatives feel threatened by his vision of an Iran less dominated by clerics.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s veiled attack on the presidency has drawn sharply polarized responses. Ali Larijani, the speaker of Parliament and a rival to Mr. Ahmadinejad, endorsed the comments and called for a parliamentary system. A former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has at times sparred with the supreme leader, warned on Tuesday that eliminating the presidency would “be contrary to the Constitution and would weaken the people’s power of choice,” according to the centrist newspaper Aftab News. Other partisans have gone further, with one pro-Ahmadinejad daily newspaper, Iran, seeming to mock the supreme leader’s comments. (That article was soon taken off the paper’s Web site.)

“The fighting in Iran is very serious now,” said Seyed Mojtaba Vahedi, a former editor of Aftab-e Yazd, an influential reformist newspaper. “The supreme leader has wanted more control over the presidency for a long time, but he never expected to have such problems with Ahmadinejad.”

Eliminating the presidency would enhance the power of Ayatollah Khamenei, who was installed for life in 1989, by leaving him with one institution to control instead of two, Mr. Vahedi said. Under the parliamentary system that Ayatollah Khamenei sketched out, legislators would elect a prime minister from their ranks.

The supreme leader might not want to risk more tumult and confrontation by eliminating the presidency while Mr. Ahmadinejad is in office, some analysts said, and it is even possible that his comments were more of a rhetorical slap, aimed at taming the president, than a serious proposal.

But other analysts said they viewed the elimination of the presidency as a possibility by 2013, when the next presidential election is to take place, or soon thereafter.

“One of the reasons why they may decide to eliminate the presidential system is precisely to avoid another presidential election and all of the political uncertainty and opportunities for popular unrest that come with it,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Either way, Mr. Sadjadpour said, it seems clear that Ayatollah Khamenei will try to ensure that the next president or prime minister is a weak and trusted subordinate he can easily control. All three of Iran’s elected presidents since 1989 — Mr. Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami and Mr. Ahmadinejad — have had their own agendas and ambitions, and all became thorns in the supreme leader’s side to varying degrees.

In a sense, the current tensions can be traced to 1989, when Iran’s Constitution was modified to create a powerful presidency as a counterweight to the supreme leader. The last president before those changes was Ayatollah Khamenei himself, and the prime minister whose position was abolished at the same time was Mir Hussein Moussavi — the opposition leader who claimed the presidency had been stolen from him in 2009.

One measure of the struggle between Mr. Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei is the banking scandal unfolding in Iran. The authorities have arrested dozens of people in what they call a wide-ranging $2.6 billion embezzlement scheme, and opponents of Mr. Ahmadinejad have repeatedly accused his close associates — including his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei — of being linked to the lead suspect.

Corruption is rampant in Iran, and analysts say the supreme leader and his team must have long known of (and possibly profited from) such a large movement of money. “They are unveiling this now simply to attack Ahmadinejad and his allies,” said Mr. Vahedi, the former editor.

The bank scandal appears to be at least partly an effort to undermine the campaign war chest of Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies, who hope to maintain their power by electing candidates in the 2012 parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential race, analysts said. The broader conflict is mostly about power, but it also has an ideological component. Although intensely devout, Mr. Ahmadinejad is dismissive of Iran’s traditional clergy, and has said Muslims do not need the intercession of clerics to contact the Hidden Imam, a messianic figure in Shiite Islam. Conservatives have lambasted the president’s circle — often singling out Mr. Mashaei — as a “deviant current.”

The constant friction has polarized the political elite, and appears to be undermining the supreme leader’s traditional role as a broker, analysts say. Although Ayatollah Khamenei crushed the reformists and the opposition movement that led massive street protests in 2009, that crisis ruptured his relationship with members of the Islamic Republic’s old guard of founders, notably Mr. Rafsanjani.

“The machinery of government is increasingly breaking down,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Khamenei has lost the old guard, the economy is collapsing, and now he is more and more isolated internationally. Can he survive? It remains to be seen.”

source

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the U.S. will maintain a strong military interest in the young Iraqi democracy even after the last combat troops leave this year, and she warned Iran not to try and take advantage of the pullout.

During a tour of the Sunday morning talk shows, Clinton said that no one, especially Iran, should underestimate America’s commitment to preserve the hard-fought gains of the last eight years.

“We have a lot of presence in that region,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley. “No one, most particularly Iran, should miscalculate about our commitment . . . to the Iraqis.”

On the heels of an eventful week that saw the death of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, the United States also vowed partnership with the Libyan people as they build a new society – one that U.S. officials insist should begin with investigations into Kadafi’s death and with the imprisonment of the convicted Lockerbie bomber now living free in Libya.

With Libya’s Transitional National Council putting together a new government, Clinton conveyed those requests while visiting Libya and elsewhere in the region last week.

As the United States draws down its presence in one country and turns its attention to reconstruction of another, the Obama administration is trying to promote security and the rule of law over strong local and regional interests.

Republicans question whether the departure of the remaining 40,000 American troops from Iraq by the end of the year serves those ideals, especially given recent threats by the Iranian president to get involved in the training of Iraqi troops.

Though the U.S. departure announced by Obama is in keeping with a timeline laid out by the previous administration, GOP critics say the president is opening the door to Iranian involvement.

The withdrawal is a “serious mistake,” Sen. John McCain said in an interview from Jordan on ABC’s “This Week,” and is “viewed in the region as a victory for the Iranians.”

“Once the military is gone, embassy personnel will be targets,” McCain said. “The fact that we have other bases in the region would have very little impact on Iraq itself.”

But in four TV interviews Sunday, using nearly identical language, Clinton strongly suggested that the U.S. will maintain a military presence in the region as well as a willingness to respond to any Iranian threat.

The most direct question on the point was from NBC‘s David Gregory, who asked Clinton whether the U.S. would still have a “military commitment” to keep Iran out of Iraq.

“Iran should look at the region,” Clinton said. “We may not be leaving military bases in Iraq, but we have bases elsewhere. We have support and training assets elsewhere. We have a NATO ally in Turkey. … I don’t think anyone should be mistaken about America’s commitment to the new democracy in Iraq that we have sacrificed so much to help them achieve.”

Meanwhile, news reports and images from the region show the Libyan leader was apparently beaten and taunted by a crowd in his hometown of Surt before his death, raising questions about the government’s assertion that he was killed in crossfire.

Administration officials voiced concern about what the reports portend for the rule of law and the establishment of civil institutions in Libya. U.S. diplomats said over the weekend that they support the United Nations call for an independent investigation into the death of Kadafi.

On Sunday, Clinton made that position public and expressed support for the investigation the transitional council says it will conduct. Clinton also said she told Libyan officials that the U.S. wants to see Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, incarcerated to serve the rest of his life sentence. Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison two years ago on humanitarian grounds because he was suffering from cancer and said to have three months left to live.

Although the United States wants to see Megrahi returned to Scotland, Clinton said Sunday that Scotland was the “preferable” place for him to serve his sentence.

The new government in Libya must “start with the rule of law,” Clinton said on NBC, and with “accountability, unity and reconciliation.”

Kadafi loyalists should be safe in Libya and be included in the new government, she said, “as long as they don’t have blood on their hands.”