A former adviser to Iran's firebrand ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he believes to be God's representative on Earth and calls himself Yeltsin of Iran. He added that the former president is adamant the Islamic Republic will collapse in less than 6 months.

In a recent interview carried by several news outlets including the proreform Fararu, former presidential adviser Abdolreza Davari who until recently supported Ahmadinejad has characterized the policies of his former boss as "erratic," adding that Ahmadinejad's radical stances often destabilize Iran's political scene.

He accused Ahmadinejad of claiming to represent the Shiites' hidden 12th Imam, the Mahdi. He quoted Ahmadinejad as saying that the hidden Imam believed to be in the occult for nearly 1,100 years, will briefly reveal himself to the faithful soon.

Davari, who was a member of Ahmadinejad's presidential election campaign in 2009, later became a close aide of the ultraconservative ex-president but turned against him and has been distancing himself from Ahmadinejad during the past months.

Davari said Ahmadinejad believes to be a divine figure like prophets. Meanwhile, he thinks his critics are Israeli agents and the enemies of the hidden Imam.

He went on to say that in late 2017 and early 2018 he came to the conclusion that Ahmadinejad is standing against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, adding that unlike the condolence message he wrote after General Qasem Soleimani's death, Ahmadinejad always portrayed Soleimani in a bad light.

Davari said: "Ahmadinejad believes that the Islamic Republic will collapse soon and that he is going to play a part similar to Russia's President Boris Yeltsin's role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."

The damning statements by Davari may have been engineered by other Iranian hardliners to push Ahmadinejad aside from the presidential contest by tarnishing his image as a potential enemy of Khamenei and a deviant Shiite, although the statements can simply reflect an insiders' anger and dissent for whatever reason.

Davari has been observed recently to support military candidates such as Saeed Mohammad, an adviser to the IRGC commander in chief, and Hossein Dehghan, who is Khamenei's military adviser.

Ahmadinejad's supporters have told Fararu that the reason why Davari has turned against Ahmadinejad is that he has a looming five-year jail sentence and hopes to have the sentence slashed by appeasing other hardliners.

"As early as 2017, Ahmadinejad used to tell his advisers and aides that the Islamic Republic was going to collapse within the next 3 or 6 months. His aide Hamid Reza Baghaei even believed that the Islamic Republic will not survive long enough to see the June 2021 presidential election," Davari said.

He added that Ahmadinejad always doubted the regime's survival after Khamenei's death. That was why he keenly followed the news about the leader's health, Davari said, adding that a possible US attack on Iran was the second factor Ahmadinejad believed would lead to the end of the Islamic Republic. He stressed that "Ahmadinejad welcomed a US attack on Iran."

"A third factor Ahmadinejad believed would put an end to the Islamic Republic was a social revolt. In Ahmadinejad's office we followed the news of the stock market as he believed that a crash of the financial market can push the unhappy mobs into the streets," said Davari, adding that Ahmadinejad welcomes people's misery and thought this could be in his political benefit.

Meanwhile, Davari said that Ahmadinejad has an apocalyptic belief and wanted to gather all the regime's critics around himself before the hidden Imam reappears in public.

Davari said, "Ahmadinejad presents himself as the perfect man, and I believe he suffers from a mental illness. He is a person with delusions."

He said during the US presidential election, Ahmadinejad believed that if Joe Biden wins, reformists in Iran will be empowered and Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards would have to turn to Ahmadinejad because they have no one else who could stand against the reformists.