Ayatollah Khamenei averts a crisis

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Friday's elections for Iran's local councils and Assembly of Experts were widely reported as a "setback" for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And they were. But a more appropriate way to view them, says blogger Jonathan Edelstein, is as a crisis averted for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

As Edelstein, a lawyer in New York with a knack for analyzing Middle East politics, explains, Ahmadinejad's faction was hoping to take control of the Assembly in order to install Ayatollah Mohammed Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi as the new Supreme Leader. With Yazdi in charge, Ahmadinejad would be free from the shackles Khamenei has placed on him in the realm of foreign policy.

So, what did Khamenei do to ward off this threat? Same thing he does every time: Reject candidates he doesn't like. The Council of Guardians, which Khamenei controls, has the power under Iran's constitution to disqualify any candidate. In Edelstein's words, "they made it a foregone conclusion that the presidential faction would lose."

Edelstein concludes that outside of Tehran, where the Iranian President has never been loved, we just don't know whether Ahmadinejad is losing popularity on the street or not. What we do know is that an anti-Ahmadinejad alliance has formed between conservatives and reformists, at least temporarily. And that makes Ayatollah Khamenei sleep easier at night.