Mojtaba Zolnor, Vice Representative of the Supreme Leader in the IRGC, has stated that Ahmadinejad and Mashaei are like the conjoined twins Laleh and Ladan: they would die if separated. Laleh and Ladan died during a 1999 surgery to separate them.
According to Mehr News during a Monday evening conference on Insight and Scientific Jihad held by the Supreme Leader’s offices in the universities, Zolnour said regarding the Majlis’ determination to remove Ahmadinejad from office: “Majlis representatives belong to various groups. Some have acted anti-revolutionary towards the government from the very beginning.” He continued, “One group is conservative controlling the majority of seats, while others are ineffective in the Majlis.” He called the third group Hezbollahi. “They supported the president from the beginning. They supported the president because they considered him valuable and faithful to Velayat.”
Concerning the Majlis’ determination to impeach Ahmadinejad during his 11 day withdrawal from public service in April, Zolnour said: “In those 11 days, 200 military figures talked to him either in person or by telephone, but it was futile. Ahmadinejad tried hard not to come to work, but he eventually came out of aversion, necessity, and force. The Majlis had fired up and continued to be hasty. If he didn’t show up for work that day, he would have been impeached the next day.” Zolnour added, “If a vote of confidence had taken place, it would have been the biggest no vote in history.”
In another part of his speech, he answered a question about the best current interpretation of the so-called deviated movement. “Some say that if we separate Ahmadinejad and Mashaei, it’s problem solved.”
Conservatives supporting Ayatollah Khamenei call Ahmadinejad’s friends as a deviated movement. Zolnour brought up an example. “Laleh and Ladan were two girls conjoined at the head. And they both died during a surgery to separate them. Ahmadinejad many times said that ‘I am Mashaei and Mashaei is me’. Therefore their situation is such that if they surgery, or separate, they both die.” Zolnour emphasized that, “The social climate is not ripe for the appropriate approach, therefore we must be careful. Meaning that we prevent the deviated group from doing whatever it wants.”
In explaining that both feather and wing must be cut, he said: “We cannot let the ominous melodies run abound, and with the lowest possible cost live the era of free pass.” Zolnour also said, “It is not possible to separate Mashaei and Ahmadinejad from each other. Such a separation comes with a cost.”