New Yorker:

... The return of the former President has apparently unnerved even Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who backed Ahmadinejad’s reëlection, in 2009. Earlier this month, the Supreme Leader quietly met one on one with Ahmadinejad and urged him not to run, not to further polarize the country, and not to reëngage politically, Iranian officials told me. “The Leader was clear,” one official said.

Ahmadinejad responded by defiantly going back out on the campaign trail. The Supreme Leader’s office was more than peeved, so it leaked the conversation last week, Iranian officials told me. It set Tehran abuzz—about the fate of Iran’s leading hard-liner as well as the implications for the election.

Khamenei himself went public on Monday, with unusual candor. He didn’t mention Ahmadinejad by name, but he didn’t need to. “I told the gentleman who came to see me that in such a case it is not in the interest of the country for him to run,” the Leader said, in a lecture to seminarians. “Society is divided. Unity among officials and people should prevail,” he added, according to local press reports.

Two of the most famous candidates now appear to be out of the race, which is expected to decide to what extent Tehran opens up domestically—and to the outside world—after the nuclear deal ended the country’s isolation. Over the summer, there was a growing clamor for General Qassem Suleimani, of the Quds Force, the most élite branch of the Revolutionary Guards, to run for the Presidency. In a survey this summer by Iranpoll.com and the University of Maryland, Suleimani had the highest favorability rating—fifty-four per cent—of major Iranian figures (not including the Supreme Leader). President Rouhani came in third, with thirty-eight per cent.

Suleimani has spearheaded operations beyond Iran’s borders, particularly in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and in more than a dozen other countries as well. A charismatic former body-builder, he’s one of the country’s two most powerful military officials and is widely considered a hero there. He has often been photographed on front lines with local troops. Earlier this month, however, he took himself out of the race, claiming he wanted to be a soldier until the end of his life...

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