Both men are hard at work preparing for the March 2012 parliamentary election, as well as the 2013 presidential election, and Khamenei has taken off the gloves. He has given official propagandists the green light to attack Ahmadinejad and his cronies explicitly, portraying them as people who do not believe in the principle of the guardianship of the Shia jurist, the key concept bequeathed by the Islamic Republic’s founder, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.