The Latest from Iran (23 May): The Net Closes on Ahmadinejad's Inner Circle
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 16:45
1530 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mousavi campaign activist Reza Safavi has been arrested in a raid of his home by six agents, with his computer and other items confiscated.
1515 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch (cont.). More on the unusual interview in which the President's son-in-law tears apart the President's advisors....
Mehdi Khorshidi says that the leader of "deviant group" --- presumably Presidential Chief of Staff Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai --- never studied theology but dares to comment on religious matters. Indeed, Rahim-Mashai is so arrogant that he challenges Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who is esteemed by the Supreme Leader and has 30 years of experience.
Khorshidi continues that Rahim-Mashai has endeavoured to sabotage and eliminate useful people around Ahmadinejad, replacing them with his cronies.
And Khorshidi's reference to the "deviant group" splashing out money on "problematic" people such as actors? Well, in January, Hojatoleslam Mohammad-Taqi Rahbar, the head of the clerical faction in Parliament, noted Rahim-Mashai’s meeting with an Iranian actress, Hedyeh Tehrani, at the Presidential office:
Anyone with a bit of Principlist zeal will not approve of the lowly acts of the Head of the Presidential office. All Principlists especially the President’s true supporters are ashamed that such a character is running the office of the president.....I don’t know what an actress’s [photograph] exhibition has to do with the head of the presidential office that he has to fund it with $80,000 from the Treasury. These loans are handed out by him [Mashai] at a time when many farmers are struggling with repeated droughts and are starving. Yet the government refuses to give them a $1,000 loan.