Let me guess, he was caught wiggling his nose?

TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came under new pressure Sunday, as an influential cleric charged that he has been “bewitched” by a controversial senior aide and key lawmakers renewed their impeachment threat.

Ahmadinejad is behaving “unnaturally” and needs to be “saved,” Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a former supporter of the president, told the weekly Shoma magazine.

The cleric said Ahmadinejad’s top adviser, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, has used has hypnotism, spells or charms to take control of Iran’s elected leader. “I am almost certain that he has been bewitched,” Yazdi said.

The president’s close relationship with Mashaei, and his recent refusal to cut those ties, has become a major liability for Ahmadinejad. According to the semi-official Fars News Agency, Mashaei and his allies are working to decrease the role of clerics in the Islamic Republic. In April, severalclose associates of Mashaei were arrested, among them a cleric predicting the coming of the Shiite messiah and a man accused of sorcery.