Word: rafsanjani
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...Even the enrichment announcement itself bears some scrutiny. Ahmadinejad was actually upstaged by his most detested domestic political rival, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - the former president who, despite the backing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, lost his bid for a third term against Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani broke news of the enrichment to an Iranian radio station several hours before Ahmadinejad, spoiling the surprise in an effort to deny Ahmadinejad the credit for the politically popular achievement...
...From the moment he came to power in a surprising election victory last June over Ayatollah Khameini's preferred candidate, Ahmedinajad has been assailed from two sides: the Old Guard of clerics who backed the candidacy of former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and mistrust Ahmedinajad as a young upstart; and the Reformers who had rallied around his predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, and don't like his revivalist radicalism...
...telling indication of Ahmedinajad's woes was the enormous difficulty he faced in appointing an oil minister: his first three choices were summarily rejected by the conservative-dominated Iranian parliament. It didn't help that the man he had beaten in the election, Rafsanjani, is head of the powerful Expediency Council, which arbitrates disputes between the parliament and the ayatollahs. That power allows Rafsanjani to undermine Ahmedinijad's policies. As a result, the President was reduced to moaning that none of his predecessors had ever faced such hostility at home...
...pursue a nuclear energy program. Even Iranians who dislike the President bristle at the suggestion that their country should not be trusted with nuclear-fuel techonology. By engineering a confrontation with the West over the nuclear issue, Ahmedinijad has forced his rivals to defend him. This week, even Rafsanjani took time off undermining the President's power to attack the West for trying to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions...
...Ahmedinajad been a totalitarian tyrant, like Saddam, he would not have needed to play the nuclear card to disarm his domestic rivals: he'd simply have tossed someone like Rafsanjani in jail, or sent him to the gallows. As an elected leader hemmed in by the checks and balances of the parliament and the ayatollahs, Ahmedinijad needs to play politics in order to survive...