Overruling Ahmadinejad

In Iran — like anywhere else — political disagreements have a tendency of going upwards to be resolved. The more serious or bad-tempered the disagreement, the higher up it can go. But in Iran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei officially has the religious, as well as the political, last word, and is hence loath to be seen as involved in daily politics. Ayatollah Khamenei prefers to remain aloof even if his office is involved in every branch of government. Hence Tehran’s chattering classes have become agitated when Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the parliamentary speaker, revealed he had brought Ayatollah Khamenei into a dispute between the parliament and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over heating supplies. Ahmadinejad had refused to implement a bill passed by parliament offering relief to villages suffering gas cuts at a time of plunging temperatures. Parliament’s move was a response to many areas being left without heating in Iran’s coldest