Reuters Could Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be Iran's last president? Some Iranians think so after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested scrapping a directly elected presidency, which critics say would weaken Iran's version of democracy and make the Islamic Republic more Islamic than republican. Ahmadinejad, whose second and final term ends in June 2013, dismissed Khamenei's proposal — dropped into the middle of a lengthy speech — as “academic” rather than a policy plan. But clerics, politicians and analysts are taking it seriously enough to wonder whether Iran, whose bitterly contested presidential election in 2009 ignited months of street protests, will hold one at all in 2013. “The announcement of this issue by the leader, especially at a popular gathering, cannot have been without great reason,” Etemad newspaper quoted senior cleric Mohammad Reza Abbasi-Fard as saying. Seminary teacher Mohsen Gharavian was blunter. “Ahmadinejad is the last president to be elected directly by the people,” Abrar daily paraphrased him as saying. “Beginning in 2013 Iran's political system will undergo a change.” Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, pulling Iran to the right after eight years of reformist President Mohammad Khatami. His 2009 reelection was marred by alleged vote-rigging and plunged Iran into its worst turmoil since the 1979 revolution. Reformists are considering boycotting a parliamentary election in March, which would undermine Iran's democratic credentials. Initially seen as something of a Khamenei protege, Ahmadinejad has faced challenges this year from hardliners who fear his faction threatens the role of the clergy in Iran's unique form of government: a parliamentary system, with a directly elected president overseen by a powerful cleric. Khamenei's assertion last week that there would be “no problem” in replacing the directly elected presidency with one elected by parliament has been welcomed by those who want to clip the ambitious Ahmadinejad's wings. Parliament has grown more hostile to the president since his attempt in April, vetoed by Khamenei, to sack the intelligence minister, who plays a key role in overseeing elections. Add to that concerns about a “deviant current” of presidential aides who often put Iran's Persian heritage on a par with its Islamic culture, and many religious hardliners would be happy to do without a headstrong president. Abbasi-Fard, a former member of the state Guardian Council that vets presidential candidates, said it was Ahmadinejad's overbearing style that had pushed Khamenei to raise the idea of scrapping the elected presidency. “If the megalomania and obstinacy continues,” the supreme leader “might go beyond the (verbal) guidance and preaching” and push for the elected presidency to be abolished, Abbasi-Fard told Tuesday's Etemad in an interview.This would signal the biggest constitutional change since 1989, at the end of the reign of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, when the position of prime minister was abolished and that of president strengthened. For Reza Marashi, an analyst at a Washington-based advocacy group, the National Iranian American Council, replacing a popularly elected president with one picked by parliament — effectively turning him into a prime minister — would further strengthen an already highly powerful supreme leader. “Should Iran decide to eliminate the post of a directly elected president, the primary role of a reinstated premiership would be to execute the supreme leader's directives,” Marashi wrote in an analysis published online. __
