I'll keep this short. An influensial Iranian Newspaper's allied with Hashemi Rafsanjani (a powerful figure in Iran's clerical leadership and Iran's former President) rebuked Iran's current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
Iran's ex-nuke negotiator criticizes Ahmadinejad's accusations of treachery
Considering people as criminal before a verdict by court is a violation (of the law)," he said, according to a number of Iranian papers Thursday, including the independent Etemade Melli.
Rowhani also accused the government of a lack of tolerance of opponents. "It is not possible to eliminate all rivals. It is not possible to label rivals as enemies. One cannot manage the country with just a few people. We have to use all ideas and experts," he said.
"History advises us that societies always failed when they invent enemies among themselves," said Rowhani. "An imagined enemy causes confrontation between social forces and leads to splits."
This siginals a growing split among Iran's leadership. Ahmadinejad seems likely to suffer a crippling blow in the upcoming parliamentary elections in March.
Rafsanjani's camp, which includes Iran's older more experienced politicians, has increasingly criticized the president for mismanaging the economy and creating enemies in Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pretentious rhetoric and his firing of Iran's nuclear negociator Hossein Mousavian using trumped up charges of treason may have finaly have worn out the patience of Iran's real leaders, it's ruling clerics. While the election in March may not be regime change but will it forstall dick Cheney's plans for attacking Iran? That is if Iran isn't attacked before then. The departure of David Wurmser dick Cheney's Middle East advisor until just recently could alter the situation.
The Warpath to Regime Change
In a 1999 book, Wurmser had laid out a plan for using the Iraqi Shiite majority and their conservative clerics as U.S. allies in the "regional rollback of Shi'ite fundamentalism"—meaning the Islamic regime in Iran.
But Wurmser also believed that the Baathist regime in Syria was an obstacle to regime change in Iran. Beginning with the 1996 "Clean Break" memo, written by Wurmser with the help of other future Bush administration figures like Perle and Douglas Feith for the then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Wurmser had argued that once Hussein was removed, the next step was to take down the Assad regime in Syria.
In a September 2007 interview with The Telegraph, a few months after he had left Cheney's office, Wurmser confirmed his belief that regime change in Syria—by force, if necessary—would directly affect the stability of the Tehran regime. If Iran were seen to be unable to do anything to prevent the overthrow of the regime in Syria, he suggested, it would seriously undermine the Islamic regime's prestige at home.
David Wurmser is out of dick Cheney's office now. But will that improve his old boss's outlook? Doubtful.