Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, has urged Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to remove his newly-appointed first vice-president, in an embarrassing "order" to the president, a senior Iranian cleric said yesterday.

Ahmad Khatami, Tehran's conservative Friday prayer leader , who supported the president's "landslide" re-election, said Mr Ahmadi-Nejad had no other choice but to "abide by the supreme leader's view immediately".