Iran's President Faces Impeachment Threat

Iran's parliament revealed this week that it had planned to impeach President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — and refrained only under orders from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The disclosure exposed a deepening division at the very top of the Iranian regime.

Four prominent lawmakers released a report on Sunday, discussed in parliament on Monday, that amounted to the most extensive public criticism of Ahmadinejad to date. It accused him and his government of fourteen counts of violating the law — illegally importing gasoline and oil, failing to provide budgetary transparency, and withdrawing millions of dollars from Iran's foreign reserve fund without parliamentary approval. "The president and his cabinet must be held accountable in front of the parliament," the report stated. Conservative newspapers separately reported a new petition to bring the impeachment debate itself before the chamber.

The moves came as the regime faced mounting domestic pressure over Ahmadinejad's plan to phase out subsidies for fuel, food, and utilities — in an economy already strained by international sanctions over Tehran's nuclear program.

The irony was hard to miss: the parliamentarians were conservatives, the president's own supposed camp. The rift was not between reformists and hardliners but within the hardline establishment itself — over economic mismanagement, executive overreach, and a presidency increasingly at odds with the legislature that had once backed it.

Ahmadinejad survived. But the week made public what had been whispered for months: the supreme leader's protection, not parliament's confidence, was what stood between the president and impeachment.