Yeah, yeah….I know everyone’s crazed about the New Hampshire primary, but this New York Times piece about tensions between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and “President” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems a significant bit of good news. The story, essentially, is that with the US intelligence community’s NIE on the Iranian nuclear program removing the threat of a US attack, the Iranians are now turning their attention to the domestic economy–which is a mess, thanks, in part, to Ahmadinejad.
One name to watch in all this is Ali Larijani, a moderate conservative and a favorite of Khamenei’s who was removed–for reasons unclear–as Iran’s nuclear negotiator and now turns up on a “personal” trip to Egypt, with whom Iran is trying to re-establish diplomatic relations. Larijani is a possible replacement for Ahmadinejad in next year’s elections.
But the big news is this: We remove the threat of attack and, all of a sudden, the Iranian hardliners are in trouble. Wonder if Bill Kristol will write a column about that in the New York Times.