Iran political infighting now ‘treason’

TEHRAN — In his clearest warning that political infighting by his subordinates must end, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday that their public disputes would be treated as treason.

Complaining that the increasingly open public fights between the executive branch of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and highranking officials in the legislative and judicial branches were providing ammunition to “foreign media and enemies,” the ayatollah, who has the last word on affairs of state in Iran, set the clearest red line ever to those running the country’s dayto-day matters.

“I warn the heads of the three branches to mind their own business,” Khamenei said, according to Iranian media accounts. He stressed that “from now on,” until presidential elections scheduled for June, those “exploiting emotions of the people” would be guilty of “committing treason against the country.”

The warning sets up Khamenei to intervene in the continuous bickering that has pitted Ahmadinejad against the alliance of Sadegh Larijani, head of the judiciary, and his brother Ali Larijani, the parliament speaker.

The most recent public fight, in which Sadegh Larijani last week blocked Ahmadinejad from visiting the president’s arrested aide in Tehran’s Evin prison, is the tip of a much wider dispute, reflected in speeches and bitter letters that have been made public.

The Larijani brothers are backed by leading Shiite Muslim clerics who fear that Ahmadinejad is working to curb their influence. In turn, the president, whose 2009 disputed re-election led to unprecedented street protests by the mostly urbanized middle class, is increasingly portraying himself as a defender of human rights.

The ayatollah’s blunt warning differs from his past tendency to avoid increased pressure on Ahmadinejad.