End infighting, allies urge Iranian leaders

Violent crackdowns by security forces are turning demonstrators who do not oppose the Islamic republic into extremists intent on bringing down the country's leaders, according to members of Iran's political establishment. Saying they fear for the nation's future, they are stepping up demands that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other top officials work out a compromise with their political opponents.

"When you attack moderates, you breed radicals," said Amir Mohebbian, a former politician who shares Ahmadinejad's ideology but is critical of his policies. "Our leaders should say to the core of the protesters: 'We are not against you.' Otherwise, our system might be in danger."

Iran's top leadership has been deeply divided since Ahmadinejad's disputed June 12 election victory, which led to street protests and the arrests of about 100 leading opponents.

Leaders differ not only on whether to crack down on or attempt to engage the opposition, but also on foreign policy. Iran recently failed to provide a unified answer to a nuclear trust-building deal backed by the U.N. atomic watchdog agency -- a deal that Ahmadinejad defended but that other power players turned down.

"The gaps are being deepened because some of our elite are not careful," said Saeed Aboutaleb, a former member of parliament who once supported Ahmadinejad but now opposes him. "This problem won't be solved as time passes; rather it will be increased," he wrote last month in Iran's Ettemaad newspaper.

During a May debate among presidential candidates that was televised live, Ahmadinejad attacked Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads two key supervisory councils, charging that Rafsanjani's family was corrupt. Ahmadinejad and his supporters among Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and hard-line clerics strongly disagree with Rafsanjani's more pragmatic view of Islamic rule, which is shared by other politicians who played key roles in Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

The attack, part of a broad campaign aimed at discrediting Rafsanjani and his followers, brought simmering internal differences to the surface.

Now, members of the establishment say, unprecedented public fights among leading politicians are paralyzing the overall decision-making process, with virtually every important government decision generating an open spat.

For example, Ahmadinejad recently demanded that the central government take over construction of Tehran's metro system, saying it was inefficient, but the city's mayor and the metro's top manager -- both political opponents of Ahmadinejad -- successfully objected.

Parliament, which routinely blocks government initiatives, has been the scene of heated debates and name-calling over such issues as a plan to phase out state subsidies, the confirmation of cabinet ministers and the government's new budget.

So many public squabbles have erupted among top officials that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, complained last month of an "agitated atmosphere of rumor-mongering" and demanded an end to it.