“All these things that [President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] does are now fiercely criticized because his enemies are trying to marginalize him and his faction to a good degree that no candidate will be approved from his political faction to run for president,” said Geneive Abdo, an expert on Iranian domestic politics and a fellow at the Stimson Center public policy institute, based in Washington, D.C. “They want him out of politics. They want his cronies out of politics. They don’t want to deal with him anymore.”
Although more generally known for his rhetoric battles with the U.S or Israel, “his greatest foes are in Tehran,” Abdo said.