Iran cleric says crisis over

The crisis in the higher echelons of Iran’s regime has “passed,” influential conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Janati said on Friday, as he issued a veiled warning to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The crisis in the higher echelons of Iran’s regime has “passed,” influential conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Janati said on Friday, as he issued a veiled warning to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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The confrontation between Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sparked by the aborted dismissal of intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi was “really unexpected,” Janati said in a prayer sermon in Tehran.

“We did not expect this from (Ahmadinejad) ... but the crisis has passed. Calm has returned and minds have been put at ease,” said the cleric, who heads the powerful Guardians Council, a body which overseas electoral procedures in Iran..

But Janati warned Ahmadinejad, without naming him, not to allow the recurrence of any rebellion against the authority of Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters in the Islamic republic. “He who makes bad decisions will lose the popular support,” Janati said.