Iran Special: Did Parliament "Push to Oust Ahmadinejad"?

UPDATE 1930 GMT: Parliament v. President (Ongoing). According to Kalemeh, MP Ali Motahari is claiming that he has the required signatures --- 1/4 of the 290-member Majlis --- to summon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning. (cross-posted from Latest from Iran thread)

UPDATE 24 November: William Yong gets closer to the real story in The New York Times this morning --- see our live updates for a summary.

Throughout the day we have been following this morning's dramatic Wall Street Journal story, "Assembly Pushes to Oust Iran President", which has now been picked up by outlets such as the BBC and Joe Klein of Time magazine.

The Journal is to be credited for noting and reporting on the divisions within Iran's conservative establishment. At the same time, given the seriousness of the claims that 1) Parliament was close to impeaching Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but 2) the Supreme Leader intervened to stop the process, I believe it is important to get the story right. 

I offered my tentative assessment an hour ago, "Summoning the President to answer questions in Parliament is not debate of impeachment," but I realised my analysis might also be lacking in precision. So I consulted a top EA correspondent. 

His answer:

This story has been reported in a muddled way by a number of outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, which makes this inaccurate claim:

The move to remove the president from office marks the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic that parliament has discussed impeachment of a president. Though the legislature is backed by the Iranian constitution, lawmakers can't drive Mr. Ahmadinejad from office without the supreme leader's agreement.

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was impeached and kicked out of office by Parliament in 1981.

The last sentence of the quote is also very poorly constructed: the exact procedure is that the Parliament can vote the president's impeachment, but this does not acquire legal validity until the Supreme Leader separately confirms it. So Khamenei technically does not have to do anything right now. He can wait until the impeachment is approved by Parliament and then either reply negatively or affirmatively to it. Khomeini formally replied in the latter way to the Majlis's impeachment "request" on 30 June 1981, thus officially sacking Bani Sadr. 

Now on to the main point. What the 4 MPs cited in the Wall Street Journal are saying in their letter --- which I located with some difficulty on icana.ir, because the article provides no reference to sources --- is that, by order of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad has escaped the summoning by Parliament.

Summoning is the key word here --- the Persian is "istizah". This is the first step and entails a grilling of the President --- or individual ministers, for that matter ---- by MPs, with no clear outcome known in advance. Usually in the past, the procedure of "istizah" was almost always followed by a confidence vote on the President or Minister who had received the Majlis summons. The majority of people subject to the summons would be impeached at the end of the "istizah" procedure. In the case of ministers, there is no need for additional approval by the Supreme Leader.

There are therefore two explanations to the Khamenei gesture.

1. He wanted to avoid major embarassment for Ahmadinejad, who could have become the first president since the 1980s to be called into question by Parliament for his conduct, and left standing, but smarting and humiliated in front of the nation, which could have ostensibly followed the procedure live.

2. He was wary of the fact that Parliament could have voted a no-confidence motion which would have forced him to either confirm or throw out the impeachment.

It has to be reiterated that the "istizah" procedure, to which Ahmadinejad was summoned, does not necessarily lead to impeachment. This is the error the Journal makes, based on the erroneous usage of the term that is current amongst Iranian journalists.