BEIRUT — 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 Los Angeles 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 Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi.
On Sunday, after word of Ahmadinejad’s continued absence from Cabinet meetings began making international headlines, the president resumed participating in state affairs to halt speculation about any breach between him and Khamenei.
