Political hardliners warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday that he could be deposed like past leaders if he continued to defy the country’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The implied threat was the latest evidence of the rift within Iran’s conservative camp and could serve to further sap the authority of a President already considered illegitimate by reformists.

The Islamic Society of Engineers, a political group close to parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, warned in an open letter to Ahmadinejad that he could suffer the same fate as Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who was deposed in 1953 in a CIA-backed coup with the acquiescence of the clergy. The letter also cites the experience of President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was ousted in 1981 and fled the country after he fell out with the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Both leaders had been elected by huge margins.

“It seems you want to be the sole speaker and do not want to hear other voices,” the letter said, noting that recent actions by Ahmadinejad have frustrated his own supporters. “Therefore it is our duty to convey to you the voice of the people.”

While Ahmadinejad’s reelection has angered supporters of the opposition, his postelection actions have also enraged fellow conservatives, in particular his attempts to buck Khamenei’s order to dump a controversial Vice President and his firing of Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei.

Meanwhile, Iranians braced for another round of clashes between protesters and security personnel after the Interior Ministry rejected a request to allow supporters of opposition figure Mir Hussein Moussavi to gather at a large Tehran mosque on Thursday. The protest is meant to commemorate those slain in the unrest that followed Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory in June 12 balloting.

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