Ahmadinejad

A gas leak and not sabotage caused an explosion Tuesday at a newly inaugurated section of an oil refinery in Abadan just before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, state media reported. But Ahmadinejad quickly drew criticism from a lawmaker and some staff members at the refinery who suggested that the facility in the southwestern city was launched too soon, a semiofficial news agency reported. The blast, which killed as many as four people and injured up to 25 more, did not halt Ahmadinejad's speech, which included fairly typical denunciations of U.S. relations with Middle East autocrats and the course of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to news agencies.

An explosion blamed on a gas leak struck a newly inaugurated section of an oil refinery Tuesday just before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the facility's ribbon-cutting ceremony, state media reported. At least one person was killed and up to 25 were injured by the explosion in Abadan, in Iran's oil-rich southwest, according to accounts by domestic Iranian news agencies. One Abadan resident quoted by the Associated Press said he saw rescue vehicles rushing to the site. The incident did not disrupt Ahmadinejad's speech, which included fairly typical denunciations of U.S. relations with Middle East autocrats and the course of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to news agencies.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted to send his onetime protege Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an unmistakable message: You're replaceable. The Iranian president had been skipping Cabinet meetings, apparently over Khamenei's decision to overrule his firing of the country's intelligence chief. So Khamenei asked a conservative lawmaker to begin assembling a caretaker Cabinet, just in case the president resigned or had to be removed, said an Iranian official close to the politician. Ahmadinejad eventually returned to work.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad escalated an unusually public confrontation within the country's leadership Saturday by firing three Cabinet ministers, defying Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his loyalists, who had warned him the move would be unconstitutional. Ahmadinejad accepted the resignation of the ministers of oil, welfare, and mines and industries as part of a plan to reshape the government by eventually merging eight of the country's ministries into four, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency and letters posted to his own website.

Electronic surveillance of officials at the highest levels of political power lies at the heart of a rift between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a source close to Tehran's conservative leadership told The Times. Intense mistrust of Ahmadinejad's closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, put him in the sights of the nation's spy services, the source said, triggering a sequence of events that has humiliated and weakened Ahmadinejad after Khamenei reversed a presidential decision to fire the nation's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demoted a controversial aide Saturday, Iranian news agencies reported, amid rising calls for political change throughout the Middle East. Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, was not only his top advisor, but also an in-law and comrade during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. He will retain his lesser posts. Mashaei's unorthodox views about religion, including the role of the clergy and the preeminence of ancient Iranian cultural values over Islam, earned him the mistrust of hard-liners in the Iranian establishment but also won Ahmadinejad no friends among a seething opposition movement opposed to the president and his agenda.

The Iranian opposition's most powerful sympathizer lost his post Tuesday as chief of an important clerical council that oversees the country's supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, was defeated in his bid to continue as head of the Assembly of Experts in what is widely considered a victory for his conservative rivals, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, described as a more traditional conservative cleric, became leader of the clerical body, getting 63 of 86 votes.

Iran's Foreign Ministry has barred the mayor of Tehran, a rival of conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from traveling to the United States to be honored for improving the capital's public transportation system, a local newspaper reported Saturday. Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf has been denied permission to attend a conference Monday of the Institute for Transport and Development Policy, reported the newspaper Tehran Emrouz, which is close to the mayor. Tehran, along with the Chinese city of Guangzhou, the Spanish city of Leon, the Peruvian capital of Lima, and the French city of Nantes, are finalists for the 2011 Sustainable Transport Award bestowed by the international transport institute.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday announced the firing of Iran's foreign minister as the longtime diplomat was abroad on assignment, pro-government news agencies reported. Manouchehr Mottaki, an English-speaking career diplomat and relative moderate who has served as foreign minister since 2005, has long bristled at Ahmadinejad's abrasive style. He will be replaced by Ali Akbar Salehi, an American-educated former diplomat who has been serving as chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran as well as being a vice president in Ahmadinejad's Cabinet, state television reported.

On the same day that Iran and the West agreed to meet next week for talks on Iran's nuclear program, the U.S. announced a set of fresh sanctions on the Islamic Republic's shipping lines, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said defiantly that his nation would not budge "one iota" on giving up what he described as its rights. It was perhaps an inauspicious launch to the first set of talks between Iran and world powers over its controversial nuclear program in 14 months. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili agreed Tuesday to hold talks in Geneva on Dec. 6-7 in an attempt to jump-start stalled negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, an announcement said.