On June 20, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei opposed a bill put forward by President Hassan Rouhani. The bill set out Iran's intention to join the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1999. But Khamenei rejected this, stating that Iran would not submit to conventions that undermine the country’s independence and adding: "The country members of these conventions have no role in creating them. The global powers prepare these conventions based on their own interests and benefits.” He then asked the Iranian parliament to pass its own laws to tackle money laundering and terrorism.

Khamenei’s public statements left no doubt that that he was against joining the convention, despite the fact that, prior to the announcement, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani had told a public session of the parliament that Khamenei had no opinion about the government’s bill and that the representatives would decide for themselves whether to vote for or against it. Not only did Khamenei’s statements contradict that, but they amounted to a direct intervention in the legislative process.

Rouhani’s government presented the bill to the parliament in late 2017 in order to comply with recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) so that Iran would be permanently removed from its blacklist. Based in Paris, FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 “to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.” Initially, the task force was created to combat drug trafficking but, later, fighting terrorism was added to its mission.

FATF ranks countries using several criteria, including whether or not they join the above convention, also known as the Terrorist Financing Convention (TFC). Among the member states of the United Nations,188 have ratified the convention and Iran is one of the eight remaining countries that have not. Although regional neighboring countries including Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have joined the convention, Ayatollah Khamenei claimed that joining the TCF would undermine “independent countries like the Islamic Republic.”

Iran is not required to join the TFC, but doing so would be in line with FATF recommendations and mean that Iran would no longer appear on the task force ’s blacklist. Iran was temporarily removed from the list after the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), went into effect. But as the deadline for the country to implement banking reforms approaches, it is likely that Iran will once again find itself on the permanent blacklist if it does not join the TFC as the FATF recommends. This will have negative consequences for Iran when dealing with the international banking system.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s decision to prevent the passage of the bill was the latest example of his interference in the legislative process. He has interfered many times in his nearly 30 years as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic — so much so that Ali Motahari, the outspoken member of the Iranian parliament, criticized the habit, saying: “Parliament has become a branch of the Supreme Leader’s office.”

But is Ali Motahari, the son of Morteza Motahari, one of the prominent theoreticians of the Islamic Republic in its early years, right to say this?

Parliamentarians’ Rights Undermined

Under the constitution of the Islamic Republic, the representatives to the Iranian parliament enjoy favorable immunities and powers. Article 86 of the constitution declares: “Members of the Assembly are completely free in expressing their views and casting their votes in the course of performing their duties as representatives, and they cannot be prosecuted or arrested for opinions expressed in the Assembly or votes cast in the course of performing their duties as representatives.”

But in spring 2010, Ayatollah Khamenei told members of parliament that it was necessary to introduce a law to supervise the conduct of representatives so that “if, in his capacity as a representative, a person abuses his position, you can hold him accountable.” The next year, the parliament passed the Law on Supervising the Conduct of Members of Parliament.

While the bill was being discussed, Speaker Ali Larijani told a public session of the parliament that, during “private meetings," Ayatollah Khamenei had reiterated his belief in the necessity of an “internal mechanism” to supervise the conduct of members. The new law passed at the request of the Supreme Leader limited the immunity of the representatives. The seven-member supervisory board, which is elected from among the members of the parliament, can remove the immunity of representatives and even expel them.

Parliament’s Duties and the JCPOA

In 2015, two months after the nuclear agreement was signed and before the deadline for the governments involved to officially approve it, Rouhani’s administration announced that since the agreement was a political commitment and not a legal one there was no need to prepare a bill for parliamentary approval. The government’s argument was that if the JCPOA was sent to the parliament and was approved, the Islamic Republic’s commitment to the 5+1 countries (the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) would be turned into a domestic law. This would mean the government would be required to commit to it permanently, whereas other governments involved had not made a similar commitment.

Nevertheless, Ayatollah Khamenei spoke out against this argument. “I believe — and I have said the same thing to Mr. President — that it is not prudent to exclude the parliament from considering the JCPOA,” he said in a meeting with the members of the Assembly of Experts, which includes President Rouhani. “I have no recommendations to the parliament about its deliberations or whether they should approve or reject it. It is the people’s representatives who must decide.”

About a month later, the representatives to the 9th Parliament tabled a bill, “Appropriate and Reciprocal Action by the Government in Implementing JCPOA.” On October 13, 2015 it was reported that the parliament had approved the bill by a vote of 161 votes in favor, 59 against and 13 abstentions.

Mehdi Koochakzadeh, one of the most outspoken opponents of the JCPOA who was at the time a member of the parliament, said that, in a private session that took place before the public one, Ali Larijani had implicitly told the parliament that “high authorities” had decided that the bill must be approved. Quoting Mohammad Reza Bahonar, who was deputy speaker at the time, Koochakzadeh said that the previous night, during a meeting between Ali Larijani and Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and Asghar Hejazi, a representative of Khamenei’s office, it was decided that the bill must be approved without delay.

And it was. It took only 20 minutes of deliberations for the parliament to pass the bill favored by the Supreme Leader and to allow Rouhani’s government to implement the JCPOA. It is noteworthy that sometime earlier — prior to Khamenei’s call for the parliament to intervene in the approval of the nuclear deal — the Supreme National Security Council had approved the JCPOA. Upon approval by the Supreme Leader, the council’s decisions become the law of the land. This illustrates the weight that Khamenei wants the parliament to have.

It was only about a month after the parliament’s approval that Khamenei approved the decision by the Supreme National Security Council, allowing Rouhani’s government to go ahead with implementing the JCPOA.

Defying the Parliamentarians: The Press Laws

The 6th Parliament (2000-2004) had very tense relations with the Supreme Leader. The representatives, most of whom were supporters of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, were intent on changing the restrictive press laws, a key demand among the electorate at the time.

The 5th Parliament, which had been dominated by conservatives whose political worldview was closer to that of Ayatollah Khamenei, changed the press laws in the final days of the parliament with a view to putting more restrictions on the media.

Mehdi Karroubi, who has been under house arrest for years following the disputed 2009 presidential election, was the speaker of the 6th Parliament for its entire duration. “Mr. Khamenei sent a message saying that he was not against amending the press laws but that he was against bringing the bill to vote when the parliament had just started,” wrote Karroubi in his memoirs, The Letters. “What he meant was that the laws were changed only two months earlier. He said that we could act when…the existing laws have been in effect for a while and their defects are found in practice.”

But the members of the 6th Parliament wanted to implement their campaign promises immediately and prepared changes to the Press Law of the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khamenei publicly opposed the bill and, by his order, the draft legislation was permanently removed from the parliament’s agenda.

Khamenei Changed the Constitution

According to Article 44 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic that defines the economic structure of the country from a legal perspective, the state sector is the foundation of the Iranian economy and the private sector plays only a lower complementary role. Based on this article and Article 43 of the constitution, authorities confiscated a vast number of privately-owned companies, factories and properties after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

These two articles were not changed when the constitution was amended in July 1989. But in spring 2005, Ayatollah Khamenei offered a new interpretation that went against the letter of Article 44 without input from anybody else, including members of the parliament.

In effect, he changed the constitution by issuing an edict, allowing the private sector to become active in foundational economic sectors that Article 44 had reserved for the state. By doing this he bypassed the requirement that any change in the constitution must be done with the participation of various institutions, including the parliament, and must be approved by the people in a referendum.

Opposing Parliamentary Powers: Questioning the President

Article 88 of the constitution states: “Whenever at least one-fourth of the total members of the parliament pose a question to the president, or any one member of the Assembly poses a question to a minister on a subject relating to their duties, the president or the minister is obliged to attend the Assembly and answer the question.”

In autumn 2011, more than 100 parliamentarians submitted a request to the speaker for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to appear before the parliament and answer questions. Two days later the request was sent to parliament’s Planning and Budget Committee for review.

Government representatives could not convince the committee to rescind the request, so Ahmadinejad was scheduled to appear at a public session of the parliament and answer questions for a second time during the lifetime of the Islamic Republic. But Ayatollah Khamenei prevented it. In an speech delivered to the members of Basij militia, he said: “The action of the legislature to carry out its duties and, likewise, the belief of the executive power in the honesty and the rightfulness of its actions were a good test for the two branches but I believe that this move must stop here and should not go any further.”

Following this speech, members of the parliament withdrew their signatures and Speaker Ali Larijani wrote a letter to Khamenei. “Obeying Your Excellency’s orders are a duty and an honor for me and the members of the parliament,” he wrote.

Opposing Parliamentary Powers: Inquiry and Investigation

In 2015, following reports of large-scale financial wrongdoings at the Police Cooperative Foundation during the time when General Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam was the commander of National Police, the parliament decided to investigate the affairs of the foundation.

Article 76 of the Iranian constitution states that parliament “has the right to investigate and examine all the affairs of the country” — but parliament itself has imposed restrictions on this power. Article 214 of the Internal Bylaws of the Islamic Consultative Assembly [Persian link] states that the power of “inquiry and investigation does not apply to the Guardian Council, the Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Council, the cases being processed by the judicial authorities and the fundamental judicial affairs. Organizations under the supervision of the Supreme Leader can be investigated [only] upon his permission.”

Ayatollah Khamenei refused to give his permission to the parliament to investigate the reported malfeasance at the foundation.

Fear of Khamenei Blocks Bills

Khamenei’s interference in the daily affairs of the parliament has become so pervasive that when the representatives were deliberating whether or not to combine the two ministries of labor and cooperatives, Speaker Ali Larijani found it necessary to announce during a public session of the parliament: “This morning the Exalted Supreme Leader sent message that he has no view vis-à-vis combining the [two ministries] and the parliament can make its own decision.”

Under such conditions, the government and those members of the parliament who sympathize and wish to take into consideration the people’s demands, refrain from introducing bills that they believe Ayatollah Khamenei will publicly oppose. One significant example is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women that was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1979, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. Among all the UN member countries only Iran, Holy See (Vatican), Somalia, Sudan and Tonga have not joined the convention.

By joining the convention, member states promise to end sexual discrimination against women defined as "any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."

But the Iranian Supreme Leader does not agree with sexual equality. “Why should something that is for men be given to women?” he asked. “What kind of honor is it for women to do something that is within the domain of men?”

And the Guardian Council, a body that must approve anything passed by the parliament before it becomes law, also declared the convention to be against “principles of Islam.” It is important to remember that half the members of the Guardian Council are appointed by the Supreme Leader.

The result is that many bills are not introduced to the parliament because the government or the sponsors among representatives strongly suspect that Ayatollah Khamenei will reject them straight out.