Larijani vs. Ahmadinejad

The power struggle between Ali Larijani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now changing to the benefit of Larijani.

As you probably know, Larijani is a close friend of Khamanei and is on the top of two crucial institutions now, both appointed by Khamenei: Nuclear negotiation team, and National security council.

I wrote a few weeks that the single biggest reason Ahmadinejad is ranting unexpectedly against Israel and the uproar he's made in the past few weeks, has internal purposes.

Khamenei has effectively prevented Ahmadinejad from having any say in foreign policy. So Ahmadinejad's strategy has been causing problems in major foreign policy issues in order to get into the gaming.

He managed to achieve some success in this regard and he definitely has gained some grounds. But it's very hard to keep it that way, since he's set the bar so high he can't push it further. Israel is the single biggest foreign policy issue in Iran these days and Ahmadinejad has pushed that envelope as far as it could go.

So now we gradually see Larijani getting more involved and more exposure. He now does more interviews and does more sensitive meetings (with Muqtada Sadr).

I guess he's winning the game and soon Ahamdinejad has no choice but to focus on internal problems and to materialize his promises. Unless he doesn't want to give up in which case we'll see a new controversial positions and speeches from him.