Hardline conservative Iranian politicians of varying affiliations have been fiercely battling each other lately in preparation for the June presidential election. One of the latest disputes broke out between former controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Majles Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel.

While Ahmadinejad's supporters said last week that he had a meeting with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's influential son Mojtaba to seek his and Khamenei's blessing for his candidacy, Haddad Adel, who is Mojtaba's father-in-law said during a public address to hardliner voters that Ahmadinejad has no chance for running for President in June.

Ahmadinejad's response has been harsh. He accused Haddad Adel of opportunism and stated that that pro-Khamenei politician used to kiss former Empress Farah's hand when he was a young functionary before the 1979 Revolution. That is something many modern Iranians would be proud of, but for a man who has been pretending to be a staunch supporter of the Islamic regime, it sounds like the kiss of death.

Probably in a bid to fuel the infighting in the ultraconservative camp, Mohammad Mohajeri, a conservative political activist told the reformist Etemad online on Tuesday that Ahmadinejad is behaving like a low-key celebrity who wants to win fame by mudslinging against others.

Elaborating on whether the rift between Ahmadinejad and Haddad Adel is likely to harm the conservative camp’s unity, Mohajeri implied that conservatives faced no real competition from reformists in June and therefore unity among them means very little, allowing every candidate to campaign for himself.

Mohajeri characterized the infighting in the ultraconservative camp as an attempt by various politicians to determine and prove their weight.

While many Iranian analysts such as Sadeq Zibakalam have said that if allowed to enter the presidential race Ahmadinejad can easily win up to 15 million votes and that he can garner further popular support, Haddad Adel has no such popularity to run for president. Yet thanks to his family ties with Khamenei, he has been trying to act as a kingmaker in recent elections with no commendable success. 

Haddad Adel has tried to forge a conservative alliance in the past two parliamentary elections and the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections but he has never attained that goal due to divides among various conservative parties. The divide has even been evident over electing a Majles speaker last May, when another hardliner Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who never danced to the conservative camp's tune, won the much-coveted seat.

Nonetheless, Mohajeri noted that if reformists posed a threat to conservatives in June, then the situation would be different and conservative figures might choose to give way to a heavyweight candidate to defeat reformists.

He acknowledged that if Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raeesi announces his candidacy, almost everyone across the conservative camp would submit to his leadership.

Asked about the possibility of former Majles Speaker Ali Larijani's candidacy, Mohajeri said: "I have no idea if he wants to run at all. But if he does, he will be supported by part of the conservative camp and part of reformists." Larijani and his brothers have also been targets of Ahmadinejad’s ire in the past.

Mohajeri, who is close to Larijani, criticized Ahmadinejad for behaving in an "obnoxious" way and said he has no place in Iran's future. "His treatment of Haddad Adel has been Machiavellian and far from polite and ethical. He changes his views too frequently and adheres to no principles."