[Analysts said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s public attack on the Larijani brothers reflected his apparent preparation for an increasingly public fight with political enemies. The outcome could determine his influence after his second term ends in July 2013. He is not allowed to run in the June 2013 presidential election. ]
TEHRAN
— A long and bitter rivalry between Iran’s president and an
influential band of brothers in the political hierarchy exploded into the open
on Monday, signaling new fractures in the facade of unity as the country
confronts worsening economic conditions and isolation over the disputed Iranian
nuclear program.
In
a letter published by Iranian news sites, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused
the head of the powerful judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, of protecting
“certain individuals” from prosecution for economic corruption who are widely
understood to be high officials, including Ayatollah Larijani’s oldest brother.
Mr.
Ahmadinejad also demanded access to Tehran’s Evin prison, to visit one of his
aides who has been held for nearly a month. In order to build his case, Mr.
Ahmadinejad referred to a range of articles in the Iranian Constitution that
explain the powers of the president.
The
accusation escalated a simmering conflict between Mr. Ahmadinejad and opponents
among influential clerics, parliamentarians and commanders. It followed a
decision announced on Sunday by Iran’s judiciary to deny Mr. Ahmadinejad access
to the prison — a humiliating slap at the president’s authority.
Mr.
Ahmadinejad had wanted to visit Ali Akbar Javanfekr, his press adviser and
former head of the official Islamic Republic News Agency, imprisoned since
September on a six-month sentence for having insulted Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr. Javanfekr’s arrest and conviction had also been
seen as a move to curtail presidential powers.
Adding
insult to injury, a judiciary statement said Mr. Ahmadinejad had been informed
his visit would be “inappropriate” and divert attention from Iran’s economic
problems.
Both
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government and his opponents have been trying to cast each
other as responsible for double-digit inflation, high unemployment and a
devaluation of the national currency. These economic indicators have worsened
in recent months with the bite of antinuclear sanctions, which have constricted
Iran’s ability to sell oil and do routine banking transactions.
The
hostility expressed between the country’s highest leaders, at a time of
increasing Western pressure, comes despite repeated calls for political unity
by Ayatollah Khamenei.
Mr.
Ahmadinejad, in his letter, emphasized his position as the most important
directly elected official in the country. He also insisted that under Iran’s
Constitution the president has the right to visit a prison.
Analysts
said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s public attack on the Larijani brothers reflected his
apparent preparation for an increasingly public fight with political enemies.
The outcome could determine his influence after his second term ends in July
2013. He is not allowed to run in the June 2013 presidential election.
“Ahmadinejad
has created a win-win situation for himself,” said Amir Mohebbian, a political
analyst close to Iran’s supreme leader, referring to the president’s demand to
enter the prison. “If he is denied access, his opponents will look
unreasonable. If he manages to enter Evin, they look weak.”
Iran’s
political system is structured around a president and Parliament directly elected
from a group of candidates vetted by a council of jurists and Islamic experts,
some by the supreme leader and others by Parliament. The supreme leader also
has a say in appointing other officials and has final word on all important
matters. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s uncompromising management style and choice of
controversial advisers has grated on the clerics and led to a debate over his
influence.
Mr.
Ahmadinejad has been defending his inner circle of advisers against accusations
of corruption, black magic and espionage for MI6, the British intelligence
service. He is also disliked by Iranians who took to the streets after his
disputed his re-election victory in 2009.
Mr.
Ahmadinejad personally prevented an earlier attempt to arrest Mr. Javanfekr,
which apparently led the judiciary to take the adviser into custody at the
precise moment when the president was addressing the United Nations General
Assembly on Sept. 26 in New York.
Many
of the Shiite clerics and commanders who once supported Mr. Ahmadinejad’s rise
to power have turned into bitter enemies and are hoping Mr. Ahmadinejad will
quietly sit out the end of his term. Instead, Mr. Ahmadinejad is increasingly
trying to portray himself as a man of the people whose policies are obstructed
by long-serving officials with selfish interests.
“Mr.
Ahmadinejad, by referring to many articles of the Constitution in his letter,
is underlining that he represents the people, because they elected him,” said
Nader Karimi Joni, an Iranian journalist who has closely followed the power
struggle.
After
years of accusing former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his family
of corruption, Mr. Ahmadinejad is now increasingly focusing on the influential
Larijani family, whose five brothers all have high positions in Iran’s ruling
elite.
The
judiciary chief was appointed by Iran’s supreme leader in 2009. An older
brother, Ali Larijani, a former top nuclear negotiator, is the head of the
Parliament and may run for president next year. Mr. Ahmadinejad recently
attacked the Parliament speaker by name at a news conference, saying that Mr.
Larijani should help the government instead of trying to blame it for the
country’s economic problems.
On
Monday the Parliament speaker referred to Mr. Ahmadinejad as “his dear brother”
and sought to present the dispute as not personal. “Since our country is a
democracy, disagreements are good,” he said according to the Islamic Students’
News Agency.
The
oldest Larijani brother, Mohammad-Javad, frequently appears on American
television as the head of Iran’s human rights council. In July he was accused
in documents published by Alef,
an official news Web site of land grabbing. The judiciary then blocked the Web
site.
In
his letter on Monday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said the decision to punish his aide was
unjust and that he wanted to visit Evin Prison to report to the supreme leader
on conditions there and “how the nation’s rights are being preserved,”
according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency.
Mr.
Ahmadinejad also suggested the judiciary had no legal right to stop him. “I
have to remind you that in the Constitution, there is nothing that requires
asking permission or agreement of the judiciary when it comes to exercising the
president’s legal duties,” the agency quoted his letter as saying.
[After intense negotiations at the 11th convention on
biodiversity, which came to a close early on Saturday in Hyderabad, rich
countries finally agreed to double their contributions to conservation projects
by 2015. But on the meeting's sidelines, top government officials and
environmentalists discussed new ways in which developing nations could preserve
their natural habitats. According to government officials, activists and other
people involved in the negotiations, many developing countries went home poised
for more cooperative efforts like Mr. Singh's pledge.]
When
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged
money for helping developing countries meet conservation goals at the
United Nations summit on biodiversity last week, conservationists and
policymakers applauded the promise.
Not so much for the amount - which, at $50 million for two
years, was just a fraction of total global spending on biodiversity - but for
what it meant in a world where conserving nature is an activity largely
financed by the West.
"That's a great initiative," said Lasse Gustavsson,
conservation director of the World Wide Fund for Nature. "It won't go far,
but you're now seeing this tendency for strong leadership on conservation from
the emerging economies."
After intense negotiations at the 11th convention on
biodiversity, which came to a close early on Saturday in Hyderabad, rich
countries finally agreed to double their contributions to conservation projects
by 2015. But on the meeting's sidelines, top government officials and
environmentalists discussed new ways in which developing nations could preserve
their natural habitats. According to government officials, activists and other
people involved in the negotiations, many developing countries went home poised
for more cooperative efforts like Mr. Singh's pledge.
With developed countries mired in the global economic slowdown,
placing tighter control on their budgets, developing countries are increasingly
turning to new sources of financing to protect the environment. As emerging
economies like India, China and Brazil become wealthier and more confident,
there has been a rise in so-called South-South cooperation, in which developing
countries provide each other economic and technical assistance.
"We now live in a flat, multipolar world where you're
starting to see the middle-income countries become international donors,"
said Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank.
At this convention, she said, "a level of practicality influenced the
negotiations."
In addition to Mr. Singh's pledge, South Korea, which will host
the next round of biodiversity talks in 2014, has put $40 million in a fund to
help developing countries invest in being green. The Brazilian Development
Bank, the world's largest development bank, maintains a $120 million fund to
fight deforestation in the Amazon and finances rainforest protection around the
world. China has set up programs to train African scientists in conserving
biodiversity. Dozens of other regional efforts have sprouted across Latin
America, Africa and Asia.
These investments are a fraction of what developed countries
have pledged for protecting biodiversity in developing countries, which will
reach about $10 billion annually by 2015, and are even slighter compared to the
estimated $80 billion to $200 billion it will cost per year to curb the loss of
the world's biodiversity. (Even the Brazilian Development Bank's Amazon fund is
financed largely by Norway.)
Still, convention delegates said these pledges are a harbinger
of a future in which larger developing countries, where conservation often
takes a back seat to goals like poverty reduction, play a more active role in
saving the environment - not just at home, but also abroad.
"The world was always seen as a North-South divide,"
said one Indian negotiator, who requested anonymity because the talks are
confidential. "Now you are talking about developing countries themselves
helping out. South-South cooperation was never institutionalized around
biodiversity before - that's the symbolism of India's pledge. $50 million may
not seem like a lot of money, but it helps a country like Guatemala."
To satisfy their need for energy and raw materials, emerging
nations have sent cheap technology and aid to their less-developed counterparts
since the 1990s. Trade between developing countries remained a bright spot
during the global financial crisis - as imports and exports slowed down across
the West, countries in the south stepped up to fill
the gap.
Negotiators said they now expected to see even more South-South
cooperation in financing conservation. Much of the world's biodiversity is
located in developing countries, where large sections of the population still
depend directly on forests and wetlands for survival. Developing countries can
benefit, the negotiators said, from their common ground in balancing the
pressures on their environment with the pressure to reduce poverty.
"It's becoming increasingly more difficult for the North to
commit to providing resources, so more South-South cooperation is
inevitable," said Geoffrey Wahungu, head of the Kenyan delegation to the
summit. "Developing countries would like to look at natural resources as
natural capital, so you have to look at like-minded development partners to
share experiences about cutting costs and using technology in
conservation."
Recently a few nations have looked at ways to integrate their
spending on development with the conservation of nature. An August 2012 study
by the Indian government found that it already spent nearly $1 billion per year
on development programs that had environmental benefits but that there was much
more scope to make poverty-reduction programs greener.
"What is happening right now is that funds are being
diverted from poverty alleviation to look at forests," said Damodaran
Appukutta, the study's author. "So you have to have a complete paradigm
change in the way of looking at conservation, where protected biodiversity is
integrated into development."
But for all the hopes of future South-South cooperation, most
developing countries aren't ready to fully take over the reins from the West.
"If we forgo the economic benefits that come from not using
our resources sustainably, then developed countries also have an obligation to
contribute," said Mr. Wahungu, the Kenyan delegate.
Mr. Gustavson, the W.W.F. conservation director, said, "We
want to see that South-South cooperation is strengthened, but not necessarily
at the expense of the already developed economies taking the issue as seriously
as everybody else."
There is also the question of how developing countries can lead
on international conservation efforts, said Pavan Sukhdev, special adviser to
the United Nations Environment Program, while ecosystems at home are
unaccountably damaged during mining and other big-budget development projects.
"Given that corporate interests determine economic
direction and resource use, we have to be careful that the demand for profits
doesn't outweigh the need for conserving nature in India," said Mr.
Sukhdev.
European delegates accused large countries like China and Brazil
of giving lip service to South-South cooperation while continuing to receive
contributions from Western countries.
"Some of the countries that receive funding have much
larger economies than most of the donor countries," said Ines Verleye, a
top delegate for the European Union. "The irony is that these are
countries that talk about South-South cooperation, and yet they're the biggest
recipients of aid and take it from the least developing countries that really
need it."
In all likelihood, any fundamental shift in who leads the
world's conservation efforts will take time. Still, economic and environmental
experts at the convention saw a new trend emerging from the changing global
landscape.
"People know that the progress being made in these global
conferences just isn't fast enough," said Ms. Kyte of the World Bank,
"and they're not waiting."
