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Leader rejects Iran vice president appointment

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is sticking by his controversial appointment for first vice president in an unusual defiance of a reported order from the supreme leader for his removal.

Ahmadinejad says he wants time to explain his decision to appoint Esfandiar Rahim Mashai to the post. In a speech Wednesday, Ahmadinejad has praised Mashai as an "honest and pious man," according to the state news agency IRNA.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the president to remove Mashai, semiofficial media have reported. Mashai's appointment last week angered the hard-line base because of his past pro-Israel comments.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's supreme leader handed a humiliation to the president, ordering him to dismiss his choice for top deputy after the appointment drew sharp condemnation from their hard-line base, media reported Wednesday.

The move by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to show his need to keep hard-liners' support even at the cost of angering the president, a close ally — at a time when Khamenei is facing unprecedented opposition after the disputed June 12 election.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appointment for his top vice president sparked a deep split within the hard-line camp to which he belongs. A chorus of ultra-conservative clerics and politicians denounced his choice, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, while Ahmadinejad had strongly defended the appointment.

Mashai is a relative by marriage to Ahmadinejad — his daughter is married to the president's son. Mashai angered hard-liners in 2008 when he said Iranians were "friends of all people in the world — even Israelis." He was serving as vice president in charge of tourism and cultural heritage at the time.

Iran has 12 vice presidents, but the first vice president is the most important because he succeeds the president if he dies, is incapacitated, steps down or is removed. The first vice president also leads Cabinet meetings in the absence of the president.

After days of controversy, Khamenei ruled. "The view of the exalted leader on the removal of Mashai from the post of vice president has been given to Ahmadinejad in writing," the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Wednesday.

It was an expansion of the already broad powers of Khamenei, who has the ultimate say in state affairs in Iran. The supreme leader is believed to informally weigh in on senior government appointments behind the scenes. But he does not have a formal role in approving appointments and it is extremely rare for him to order an official's removal.

In the election dispute, Khamenei strongly supported the president, who is seen as his protege, declaring valid the results that showed Ahmadinejad's re-election. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi claims he won the election and Ahmadinejad's victory is fraudulent, and hundreds of thousands of supporters marched in the street in the weeks after the election.

A fierce crackdown suppressed the massive street protests. But the opposition continues to press its claims that Ahmadinejad's government is illegitimate. More importantly, the clerical leadership that Khamenei in theory leads has been split, with many moderate clerics angered by the handling of the election crisis or outright supportive of Mousavi.

That has made Khamenei more reliant on hard-line clerics for support.

It was not immediately clear if Ahmadinejad would cave in to Khamenei's order.

Ali Akbar Javanfekr, top media adviser to Ahmadinejad, said on Tuesday that the president won't change his mind over the controversy. But it was unclear if his comments came before or after the supreme leader's order.

"The president makes his decisions ... within the framework of his legal powers and on the basis of investigations carried out. Experience has proved that creating baseless controversies won't influence the president's decision," Javanfekr said in his blog.

Nearly the same time as Khamenei was issuing his order late Tuesday, Ahmadinejad vowed to keep Mashai.

"Mr. Mashai is a supporter of the position of the supreme leader and a pious, caring, honest and creative caretaker for Iran ... Why should he resign?" the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "Mashai has been appointed as first vice president and continues his activities in the government."

The deputy speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Hasan Aboutorabi-Fard, meanwhile, said that Mashai's dismissal was a decision by the ruling system itself, according to the semiofficial ISNA news.

"Removing Mashai from key posts and the position of vice president is a strategic decision of the system ... Dismissal or resignation of Mashai needs to be announced by the president without any delay," ISNA quoted him as saying late Tuesday.

Iran's state television didn't report Ahmadinejad's comments supporting his deputy. A conservative Web site said TV officials had orders from higher officials not to do so.

In his first term, Ahmadinejad had several tussles with his own hard-line camp over appointments, some of whom were seen as not qualified for their posts. In most cases, Khamenei stayed on the sidelines of those disputes.

Last year, the supreme leader rebuked Mashai, calling his Israel comments "illogical," but he also demanded that the flap over the comments be put the rest and expressed support for Ahmadinejad. Mashai remained in his position.

Mashai also angered many of Iran's top clerics in 2007 when he attended a ceremony in Turkey where women performed a traditional dance. Conservative interpretations of Islam prohibit women from dancing.

He ran into trouble again in 2008 when he hosted a ceremony in Tehran in which several women played tambourines and another one carried the Quran to a podium to recite verses from the Muslim holy book.

Obama may have to wait for health care passage

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Conservative House Democrats signaled on Wednesday that Congress is far from fulfilling President Barack Obama's goal of overhauling health care, just hours before the president planned another televised appeal to lawmakers to get the job done.

"We are making progress; however, we have a long way to go," Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., chairman of the Blue Dog health care task force, said in a statement. He said they would continue to work with the administration and Democratic leaders toward legislation they can ultimately support.

Obama's ambitious timetable of votes in the House and Senate before Congress' August recess is slipping as moderate and conservative Democrats — the so-called Blue Dogs — demanded additional cost savings.

First-term lawmakers upset with proposed tax increases and objections from members of the rank-and-file opposed to allowing the government to sell health insurance in competition with private industry also slowed the president's top domestic priority.

After more than a week of tirelessly pressuring Congress to move, Obama may have to settle for a fallback strategy on overhauling health care. The best Democrats may be able to hope for this summer is action by the full House by the end of the month and some sort of agreement on a bipartisan plan in the Senate before lawmakers head home for vacation.

Not only are Republicans honing their opposition, but some Democrats in both chambers are voicing doubts about moving such complex and costly legislation too quickly.

"No one wants to tell the speaker (Nancy Pelosi) that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a key committee chairman, told a fellow lawmaker as the two walked into a closed-door meeting Tuesday. The remark was overheard by reporters.

Obama has scheduled a prime-time news conference Wednesday, expected to focus on health care. The issue is turning into a major test of his leadership. One Republican senator says if the party can stop Obama on health care, it will break him.

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, the president insisted on action by lawmakers, even as he conceded some of the criticism was valid. Referring to objections from a group of conservative Democrats in the House, Obama said, "I think, rightly, a number of these so called Blue Dog Democrats — more conservative Democrats — were concerned that not enough had been done on reducing costs."

Obama said those issues can be addressed as the legislation keeps moving forward. Congress has already spent years studying and debating the problems in the health care system, he said.

Meanwhile, a conservative South Carolina Republican, Sen. Jim DeMint, refused Wednesday to back away from his earlier assertion that the health care overhaul will prove to be Obama's "Waterloo."

Appearing on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, DeMint was asked if he stood by that statement. He replied, "It's not personal. But we've got to stop his policies. The policies are not matching up to the promises. They're loading trillions of dollars of debt on to the American people."

Given the struggle, the polls show slippage for Obama, although he remains popular.

Fifty percent of Americans approve of Obama's handling of health care, just slightly lower than his rating in April, according to The Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday. However, the number who disapprove jumped from 28 percent in April to 43 percent, with Obama losing support from independents.

With health care ranking as the top concern, 56 percent think Obama can implement a national health care plan in the next four years, but that's down from 63 percent before his January inauguration.

The AP-GfK Poll, conducted July 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, interviewed 1,006 adults nationwide. The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed weeks ago that the House would vote by the end of July on legislation to meet two goals established by Obama. The president wants to extend health coverage to the tens of millions who now lack it, and at the same time restrain the growth in health care costs far into the future. The upfront costs, however, could reach $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

The president also has vowed that the legislation will not swell the deficit, although a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday that the pledge does not apply to an estimated $245 billion to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients over the next decade.

Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, said that was because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to avert a scheduled cut of 21 percent in doctor's fees.

At the White House, Obama and moderate and conservative Democrats verbally agreed on a council of experts to find savings in Medicare, coupled with a mechanism to force Congress to act on the recommendations. The cost curbs may help woo some of the conservatives.

In the Senate, a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee met behind closed doors, pursuing an elusive agreement. The negotiations, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., have taken on new urgency. But it's unclear whether they will produce a breakthrough — or peter out in frustration.

___

Associated Press writers David Espo, Erica Werner, Charles Babington, Trevor Tompson and Ben Feller contributed to this report.