Iran's parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to impeach a cabinet minister who has been a close ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a political setback that reflects growing opposition among lawmakers to the president's policies. Ahmadinejad now faces heavy criticism for his backing of former interior minister Ali Kordan, who was impeached for having falsely claimed to hold an honorary law degree from Oxford University. An aide to Ahmadinejad was fired Sunday for trying to bribe several lawmakers to withdraw their support for the impeachment procedure.
The struggle over Kordan has exposed a growing divide between the government's remaining backers in the parliament. Shifting alliances make it hard to determine the breakdown of support, but Tuesday's vote showed a dwindling of government loyalists. Out of 290 deputies, 188 voted for the impeachment of Ahmadinejad's confidant, 45 voted against, 14 abstained and nine didn't vote at all. Thirty-four lawmakers failed to show up for the vote.
"Ahmadinejad will have trouble on all fronts," said Ahmad Zeidabadi, a political analyst and a well-known critic of the president. "Any big decision his government wants to execute first needs to be agreed by a hostile parliament."
The president's difficulties with parliament are also likely to complicate efforts to find a new interior minister. Lawmakers must approve any candidate for the post, which includes responsibility for organizing elections.
"As the problems become deeper, those who were supporting Ahmadinejad will try to distance themselves in the face of the June 12th presidential elections," Zeidabadi said.
Kordan, who had been interior minister for just three months, was voted out during a tumultuous parliamentary session broadcast live on Iranian state radio. He caused a storm by linking the lawmakers opposing him to foreign groups and anti-Iranian governments, often referred to here as "the enemy."
"Look how happy the enemy is that I'm being impeached. Look at the attacks to the system over this issue," he said during his defense, prompting dozens of lawmakers to boo.
"You, by your actions, are giving the enemy pretexts to attack us," responded Sattar Hedayatkhah, a former Ahmadinejad supporter.
On Sunday, Ahmadinejad called the impeachment "not legal" and "unfair," and he refused to attend Tuesday's session.