BY Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
The WikiLeaks document dump continues to kick up surprises.
A new diplomatic cable says the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard smacked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the face for suggesting easing restrictions on the press.
The February 2010 cable, classified secret and puckishly headlined, “He Who Got Slapped,” quotes an intelligence source recounting a contentious meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
The Iranian bigs were trying to figure out what to do in the wake of Tehran‘s explosive pro-democracy street protests of 2009.
“Ahmadinejad claimed that ‘people feel suffocated,’ and mused that to defuse the situation it may be necessary to allow more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press,” the cable says.
It continues, “Ahmadinejad’s statements infuriated Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari, who exclaimed ‘You are wrong! \[In fact\] it is YOU who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?!’
“Source said that Jafari then slapped Ahmadinejad in the face, causing an uproar,” the cable says.
Iran denies the slap happened. A Revolutionary Guard spokesman told the Fars News Agency that WikiLeaks’ publishers “invent false stories.”
The leaked State Department cables have painted Iran as a great global pariah, with even many Arab countries privately urging the U.S. to attack before Tehran can get a nuclear bomb.
HOW DID I POSSIBLY MISS THIS!?
This is amazing… it’s hilarious, but more than that it *must* say something about the *relative* power between those two. I had always thought of Ahmadinejad and Al Khameni as being the “2 top guys” in the IRI. But if the head of the IRG can get away with *slapping* Ahmadinejad publicly in front of other people …. get away with his LIFE(!?) That says he has *tremendous* power and/or that Ahmadinejad’s power is seriously sinking – and if the latter is true, that is dangerous as that is when he might try to provoke something far more serious.
Of course we’ve seen Lebanon crumble, and really the only next step is for a provocation against Israel at some point.
I can’t believe this incident did not gain greater press coverage though!