In his Friday sermon in at the main weekly prayer congregation in Tehran on Sept. 19, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told rival factions within the country's political system to halt their wrangling, saying that it was hurting the state. Without naming names, Khamenei told opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to end their "destructive" criticism of the executive branch. "If anybody has plans for the future ... they should say it. If they have solutions to existing problems, such as the problem of high prices and inflation, they should say it. Ruining officials and the government is not in (Iran's) interest," the supreme leader remarked. He added that "I am not saying this to a specific person, group or party, I am saying this to everybody." Khamenei very rarely delivers the Friday sermon in Tehran, a venue that key clerics in the regime frequently use to relay state policy on a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters. For him to use this very public opportunity to stress the need for harmony between the various institutions that make up the Iranian political system is extremely significant. Such strong language from the supreme leader is unprecedented in any case, and shows how Iran's intra-conservative rift has gone critical. The Iranian regime places a great deal of emphasis on making sure the outside world does not get wind of disputes among the various political players in Tehran. But ever since the rise of the ultra-conservatives with the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005, this discipline has been difficult to maintain. Criticism from a host of pragmatic conservatives, who hold key positions in top institutions within the Iranian political hierarchy, has become louder in the three-plus years of the Ahmadinejad presidency. Khamenei, who depends upon creating consensus within the ruling circles, is caught between these two rival conservative factions. In August, he tried to reach a balance between the Ahmadinejad administration and its critics by saying that the president should push ahead with his agenda as if he were to get a second term, but he qualified his remarks by adding that another term was conditioned upon the government's ability to perform. The supreme leader himself is trapped between two courses of action. On one hand he fears that unless the clerical regime maintains a resolute stance against the West, it risks losing control of the situation. This is particularly true with regard to difficult negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq — hence Khamenei's appreciation for Ahmadinejad's style of governance, which he has recently praised. At the same time, however, Khamenei himself is not a hard-liner, especially given his history of pragmatically dealing with previous tough situations. This would explain why most of the government institutions with oversight powers of the government are controlled by pragmatic conservatives. There are many different actors criticizing Ahmadinejad for different reasons. But the essential argument against him is that his maverick attitude has exacerbated problems for the country both on the international scene and domestically with the economy, and this at a critical time. On Sept. 9, key cleric and former national security chief Hassan Rowhani accused Ahmadinejad of harming the country. Rowhani was the country's top nuclear negotiator under Ahmadinejad's predecessor and is now a senior member of the powerful Assembly of Experts as well as one of Khamenei's two representatives on the national security council. He accused Ahmadinejad of missing "golden, big, unbelievable opportunities" to improve Iran's international standing and of using "careless, uncalculated and unstudied remarks and slogans." He singled out Iran's high inflation rate — officially at 27 percent, up from 11 percent when Ahmadinejad took office — saying that the president had failed to privatize the economy as required under the constitution. Clearly, Ahmadinejad's opponents are bitter that at a time of high oil prices, when Iran could have raked in billions as its rival Arab states in the Persian Gulf have, Iran was not able to sell its crude on the market because Iranian energy infrastructure is long overdue for an overhaul. These elements feel that the Ahmadinejad government has engaged in unnecessary confrontation with the West. Even now, with the rise of Russia on the global scene, pragmatic conservatives are warning the government against being seduced by the idea of alignment with the Kremlin as an alternative to dealing with the West. This intense internal disagreement, coupled with the fact that the Bush administration has only a few months remaining in office, means Khamenei will have a tough time reaching an internal consensus so as to reach a settlement with the United States.