Ahmedinejad in collision course with Iran Supreme Leader

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has opened a new front in a power struggle with Iranian conservatives as he insists

Ahmadinejad's oil drama fuels Iran power struggle

Iranian President insists on retaining oil ministry duties despite warning from constitutional watchdog.

By Laurent Maillard - TEHRAN

on retaining the oil ministry duties despite a warning from the constitutional watchdog.

The latest battle is over the ministry responsible for nearly 80 percent of the Islamic republic's annual revenues earned through extraction and export of the nation's vast oil and gas reserves.

Ahmadinejad announced on May 15 that he had taken control of the ministry as a caretaker after dismissing oil minister Masoud Mirkazemi in a reshuffle aimed at merging the oil and energy portfolios.

The move has provoked a political confrontation between Ahmadinejad and the conservative-dominated parliament, forcing the intervention of the Guardians Council, the powerful body responsible for enforcing Iran's constitution.

On Sunday the council, consisting of six clerics and six jurists, ruled the president had overstepped his authority, the reformist Shargh newspaper quoted the body's spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei as saying.

"According to various articles of the constitution... the president cannot be personally responsible for the supervision of the ministries that do not have a minister," Kadkhodaei said.

The government was quick to dismiss the council's remarks, with Ahmadinejad's top legal adviser insisting the president had no intention of retreating from his decision.

"The president has already announced his reading of the constitution" when it comes to the supervision of ministries, Fatemeh Bodaghi, vice president for legal affairs, said after a Sunday cabinet meeting.

"The issue has been settled and the president is the caretaker of the oil ministry," she said.

Media reported that Ahmadinejad is scheduled to inaugurate a major refinery in the southwestern city of Abadan on Tuesday, but stopped short of saying whether he would attend as the president or caretaker oil minister.

Ahmadinejad's decision also fuelled speculations that he could chair the 159th meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna on June 8.

But Shojaoddin Bazargani, a top official at the oil ministry, said on state television's website on Monday that the president would not attend but send "one of his cabinet ministers."

Iran, OPEC's second biggest crude producer, currently holds the rotating presidency of the oil cartel for the first time since its 1979 Islamic revolution.

Ahmadinejad's political rivals had argued it would be inappropriate for a president to attend a summit of ministers, while some MPs have expressed reservations that his heading such a key ministry could raise a conflict of interests.

The fresh struggle over the control of the oil ministry comes less than a month after Ahmadinejad's dismissal of intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi was promptly vetoed by the all-powerful supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The president responded to Khamenei's intervention by disappearing from public view and abandoning cabinet meetings and official visits for more than 10 days in late April.

He was accused of seeking to procure more power ahead of the parliamentary election in 2012, during which his supporters plan to back their own candidates against the ruling conservatives and religious factions.

The row also prompted his political rivals to intensify their criticism of Ahmadinejad's chief of staff and key adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, who himself is accused of leading "a current of deviation" to destroy the Islamic regime.

In mid-May, Ahmadinejad was involved in another showdown with the parliament over his plan to streamline the government through dismissing two other ministers without seeking the approval of the lawmakers in advance.

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