Looks like the self-styled “Mullah of the People,” President Ahmadinejad, may be in political hot water. Not with the Iranian people so much. They have about as much say in who governs them as sheep do in deciding who can shear them. The “electoral” process in Iran is not only rigged to prevent even a hint of secularism to intrude on the ruling holy men’s Islamic paradise but time honored electoral shenanigans such as stuffing ballot boxes, intimidating voters (200,000 Revolutionary Guards can be wonderful persuaders for the regime), and out and out dishonest counting assures the ruling elites of continued iron fist control over the country.

But judging by recent events, it appears that the messianic Golden Boy who the hardliners in the Assembly of Experts thought would lead them to a religious revival at home and regional dominance abroad may have over played his hand.

The Iranians may be poised to dominate the region as they have not done since the fall of the Shah but they are unloved by their neighbors, isolated internationally, and the regime itself is in mortal danger as a result of their dalliance with nuclear weapons. Other countries in the region view with alarm the idea of Iranian ascendancy, seeing an aggressive Shia state with nuclear weapons an intolerable situation. And the prospect of sanctions – however weak, limited, and watered down they might be – has the ruling elites nervous and wondering if more biting measures might be on the way.

But it is the threat of American and Israeli military action against Iranian nuclear facilities (and perhaps against the elites themselves) that worries Ahmadinejad’s opponents the most. The mullahs are not stupid. They’ve seen what the modern air forces of Israel and America can do to a nation’s infrastructure.

Make no mistake. Ahmadinejad’s enemies are not our “friends” by any stretch of the imagination. They hate America and the West as much as he does. But the confrontational approach taken by the Iranian President has served to unite most of the Europeans with the Americans in recognizing the danger of the Islamic regime while even their friends Russia and China are reluctantly coming around to the notion that some sort of sanctions regime is necessary. And the President’s bombastic, apocalyptic rhetoric about the holocaust, about the inevitability of Islam’s world dominance, and about the destruction of the regime’s foes has placed the ruling mullahs in the awkward position of being exposed for the truly aggressive nation they are. The pragmatists would much prefer to pretend being the peace loving, spiritual and moral leader of the region rather than the threatening, nuclear armed troublemaker that they wish to be.

All of this has led to an attempt to cut Ahmadinejad down to size, to embarrass him, and to reduce his influence. The President in Iran is actually subservient to the wishes of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And his actions are overseen by the powerful Assembly of Experts whose internal political dynamic may be changing as a result of elections held on Friday. While most of the analysis I’ve read has been cautious, one thing is clear; the hardliners incurred a setback. Several candidates supported by Ahmadinejad have apparently either gone down to defeat or received far fewer votes than was anticipated.

In the Tehran district, the election for the Experts of the Assembly saw Ahmadinejad’s most frequent and outspoken critic, former President Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani receive a huge majority – 500,000 votes more than Ahmadinejad’s candidate. If Rafsanjani can gain control of the Assembly, he can block some of Ahmadinejad’s more radical internal policies such as his purging of the ministries and replacing long time bureaucrats with inexperienced and fanatical true believers.

And Rafsanjani, along with another former President Mohammad Khatami have both made it clear that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational approach must be moderated before serious damage is done:

Mesbah Yazdi, the ultra-conservative cleric who is a close ally of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s new president, thinks that his government is God’s gift to enact Islamic values. This while three prominent and veteran Iranian politicians, former president Mohammad Khatami, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and former chief of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rouhani believe that Ahmadinejad’s presidency is an era filled with dangers that will deeply hurt the country and the Islamic Republic.

In an unprecedented move, Rafsanjani, the powerful man leading the regime’s Expediency Council that oversees the performance of the three branches of government, talks about the dangers that threaten the nation, and implicitly criticizes Ahmadinejad’s aggressive behavior and his unqualified, undeserving and incapable administration.

All of this manuevering has led to two interesting developments recently. First, the Iranian Parliament or Majlis has just recently slapped the President down by shortening his term in office, ostensibly under the guise of standardizing the election cycles for all elected offices. This will mean that Ahmadinejad will have to “face the voters” about a year and a half earlier than he anticipated which means he can be tossed out if the regime’s electoral machinery is used against him.

And that machinery gave Ahmadinejad a taste of what might be in store for him as local and regional elections held in conjunction with the Experts in Assembly show a move toward what the western press is terming “moderate” candidates but who are actually anti-Ahmadinejad pragmatists:

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced electoral embarrassment today after the apparent failure of his supporters to win control of key local councils and block the political comeback of his most powerful opponent.

Early results from last Friday’s election suggested that his Sweet Scent of Service coalition had won just three out of 15 seats on the symbolically important Tehran city council, foiling Mr Ahmadinejad’s plan to oust the mayor and replace him with an ally.

Compounding his setback was the success of Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential pragmatist and fierce critic of the president’s radical policies. Mr Rafsanjani – whom Mr Ahmadinejad defeated in last year’s presidential election – received the most votes in elections to the experts’ assembly, a clerical body empowered to appoint and remove Iran’s supreme leader. By contrast, Ayatollah Mohammed-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr Ahmadinejad’s presumed spiritual mentor, came sixth.

Analysts attributed Mr Rafsanjani’s resurgence to his newly-found status as a saviour of the reformists, the liberal movement that shunned him as a hated symbol of the establishment when it held power. Mr Rafsanjani has been increasingly identified with reformers since last year’s presidential election and many voters turned to him to voice anger at Mr Ahmadinejad.

(As an aside, The Guardian referred to Ahmadinejad’s opponents as “moderate fundamentalists.” Huh?

And only the Guardian could refer to a movement of dyed in the wool, Sharia loving, fundamentalist Muslims as “liberal.”)

While the regime manipulates the election, Ahmadinejad is not without his own ability to fiddle with the vote:

Reformists hailed the poll – billed by many as Mr Ahmadinejad’s first electoral test since taking office – as a “major defeat” for the president, but they also warned that the slowness in declaring returns could indicate an underhand attempt to rig the outcome. The interior ministry, which is in the hands of Mr Ahmadinejad’s supporters, oversees the counting of ballots.

“The initial results of elections throughout the country indicate that Mr Ahmadinejad’s list has experienced a decisive defeat nationwide. They were tantamount to a big ‘no’ to the government’s authoritarian and inefficient methods,” a statement from the pro-reform Islamic Iran Participation Front said.

Don’t expect Ahmadinejad to take a back seat to the pragmatists. He burns with the fever of the true believer and can be expected to use whatever power he has to maintain his position. He evidently still enjoys the confidence of Khamenei. And the hardliners are still a powerful force in the ruling Guardian Council which oversees the Parliament and can veto any bill it wishes. The law that would knock time off of Ahmadinejad’s term in office for instance, has yet to be ruled on by the Council. A veto there would shore up his position, at least temporarily.

But the pragmatists seemed poised to either eliminate Ahmadinejad or at least minimize his influence. As for the former, there have been two attempts on the President’s life that we know about with whispered accusations against Rafsanjani being behind the plots. It just goes to show that in Iran, being a true believer is not always a guarantor of longevity.