Iran’s Factional Disputes Grow Increasingly Bitter
New York Times
27-Aug-2009

CAIRO — On Wednesday, aides to Iran’s president lashed out publicly at two former presidents, the nation’s most influential dissident cleric said government officials had taken a “deviant path” and a government-aligned Web site reported that the Tehran prosecutor had been fired.

In another time, the day’s flurry of crises might be seen as extraordinary. But since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a landslide victory in Iran’s disputed election in June, each day there have been flare-ups in the increasingly bitter fight between political and clerical factions.

“The game in Iran is no longer between the reformists and the conservatives,” said Mustafa El-Labbad, an expert in Iranian affairs and the director of the Middle East Center for Regional and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “It is now between the pragmatists and the radicals.”

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