Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a few weeks left as president of Iran. In the meantime, he spent time this week in criminal court facing unspecified charges brought by parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani. Ahmadinejad had tried to theatrically accuse the powerful Larijani’s brother of corruption from the floor of Iran’s parliament in February. The stunt went poorly:

The court summons could be a taste of things to come for the outgoing leader who, after receiving the backing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to suppress protests against his re-election in 2009, later fell foul of the supreme leader for challenging his ultimate authority.

In February, Ahmadinejad tried to strike back and, addressing parliament, played a recorded conversation of Larijani’s brother he said implicated the family in corruption. The stunt backfired as the tape was not fully audible and Larijani dismissed the president from the chamber.

Ahmadinejad is slated to stand trial in November.

The percipitous decline in Ahmadinejad’s standing may be a function of internal maneuvering between various Iranian camps. Ahmadinejad and his fellow hardliners compete for power both with Iran’s reformists and with the so-called conservative camp. Though the hardliners and conservatives often find themselves aligned on foreign policy – like Ahmadinejad, top conservative figure and former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has mused over using nuclear weapons against Israel – they compete for power and spoils domestically.

Newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani is politically aligned with the conservative camp. Rafsanjani backed Rouhani for the presidency after Rafsanjani himself was disqualifed by Iran’s Guardians Council.

[Photo: Tom / Wiki Commons]