The Jerusalem Posts reports that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had an unpleasant telephone conversation with Syrian President Bashar Assad recently. During the conversation, Ahmadinejad reportedly told Assad that he supports “the establishment of an international tribunal on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri”. This is, obviously, quite a ‘touchy’ subject for Assad since just about every single government in the world believes that Syria is responsible for Hariri’s death.
As AP points out at Hot Air, the story might seem a bit far-fetched, but that’s not necessarily true: “there have been rumors for weeks that Iran was ready to make a deal with the Saudis over the standoff between Hezbollah and the government. Hezbollah and the Shiites would get more representatives in the Lebanese government, which would in return placate the Sunnis by ratifying the UN tribunal that’s been formed to investigate the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri.”
Meanwhile, Assad is the least of Ahmadinejad’s problems: Hashemi Rafsanjani Ahadinejad’s “most influential opponent”, has said that Ahmadinejad’s “trial period is over” and that he “would use his position as head of the expediency council, a state body empowered to set the Islamic regime’s long-term goals, to reshape the government’s economic policies”, according to this article in the Guardian.
Crosspatch explains at The Strate-Sphere that the old saying ‘when it rains it pours’ “is an apt description of the problems facing the Iranian president these days.” In short: Iran’s economy is horrible, he is very unpopular domestically, the meeting with “the King of Saudi Arabia apparently went badly”, he now “alienated the Syrians” and the “teachers are strikingdemonstrating.”
Is Ahmadinejad becoming his own worst enemy? It certainly seems so.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.