Until last Tuesday, 66-year-old Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was front-runner to become chair of Iran’s majles-e khobregan (Assembly of Experts) and in time successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader, easily the most important position in the land.



Shahroudi had been acting chair of Khobregan since previous incumbent Ayatollah Mohammed Reza Mahdavi fell into a coma in June last year before his death in October. Many in Tehran believed Khamenei had already indicated a preference for Shahroudi as his eventual successor four years ago in delegating to him the leader’s responsibility for liaising between parliament, president and judiciary.

Then suddenly last week Shahroudi withdrew from a vote within the Assembly to choose its chairman, leaving Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the 83-old former judiciary chief, to defeat former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by 47 votes to 24.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (left) and former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani attend a two-day official meeting of Iran’s Assembly of Experts in Tehran, Iran, March 10, 2015. Photograph: Ahmad Halabisaz/Ahmad Halabisaz/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Khobregan is an opaque body of 86 senior clerics, directly elected by the Iranian public to choose and supervise the leader. It rarely meets, and yet when Khamenei, 75, is called to his eternal reward the Assembly will pick a successor with last word on most matters of state, including the power to declare war and to make top appointments including the heads of the armed forces and the chief of state media. The leader should be a leading cleric, although not necessarily the pre-eminent one.

Its selection of Yazdi looks like a shift towards the right. His most noted views have been condemning music as haram (forbidden in Islamic law) and calling in 2010 for the house arrest of Rafsanjani for not forcibly condemning street protests after the disputed 2009 presidential election.

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Yazdi is far from the most radical of Iran’s so-called principle-ists, but he was apparently supported as chairman by Ayatollahs Ahmad Jannati and Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. Iranian politics is heating up. At 83, Yazdi may not be a likely candidate for leader unless a vacancy occurs within the next few years, but his election as chairman of Khobregan probably reflects determination from the likes of Mesbah-Yazdi, 80, and Jannati, 88, to block Shahroudi. Last year Jannati warned of “a plot” to take over the Assembly, presumably by reformists, pragmatic or even mainstream conservatives.

Next February 26 will see an election both for the Experts Assembly and Iran’s parliament. Both will be keenly contested, partly as a test of strength between supporters of the government of President Hassan Rouhani and fundamentalist (or principle-ist) opponents. But there is a special edge in that the next Experts’ Assembly may well during its eight-year term choose a successor to Khamenei, who last year underwent prostate surgery.

In the 26 years since succeeding the leader of the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei has broadly sympathised with the conservative camp, especially on cultural matters, and strongly backed the crackdown on unrest after the 2009 election. But he has also accepted direct talks with the United States, first over Iraq and then over the nuclear programme. His leadership style has been to steer quietly or even await consensus within the political class.

Hence Khamenei has preferred the conciliation of president Rouhani to the truculence and unpredictability of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He will have no wish for his succession to be a bitter or drawn-out battle.

Shahroudi seemed a consensual candidate for chairing Khobregan, and in time becoming leader, because he is respected throughout Iran’s political class, among the clergy in Qom and in other groups including military chiefs. Hence this week’s choice of Yazdi has raised eyebrows.



Shahroudi‘s explanation for his withdrawal from the election of the chairman was that there were too many candidates, originally four. Nima Mina, senior lecturer in Persian and Iranian studies at Soas (the School of Oriental and African studies, London university), is not convinced.

Mina believes the real explanation may lie in a report published the previous week in Seda, a weekly magazine published by journalists like Saeed Leylaz with links to the reformist and “moderate” camp. It has also been quoted by Saham news:

Seda reported the judiciary is investigating Shahroudi – although he is not mentioned by name - over financial irregularities to do with the Islamic republic’s Red Crescent organisation and the diversion of funds for buying airplane engines and cars. Part of these funds allegedly went to Iraq, where the ayatollah, who was born in Najaf, has active networks and many followers. The piece suggested the investigation could turn into the most important case of financial corruption in the Islamic republic’s history.

Mina also believes Shahroudi may have lost support in the Assembly – rather than benefited – from his wide connections in Iran’s political class. Not only did he vote in 2013 in the Guardian Council, the constitutional watchdog, against excluding Rafsanjani from the presidential election on grounds of age, he in 2012 reportedly employed an associate of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh, who had been jailed in 2011 for financial irregularities.



“Maybe the fact that he does have respectful relations with Rafsanjani and even Ahmadinejad’s team was used against him,” Mina told me.



The miscalculation of Rafsanjani in standing against Yazdi this week is even harder to explain. Rafsanjani has a mixed history with the Experts’ Assembly: he topped the poll in Tehran last time the Assembly was elected, in 2006, and chaired the body from 2007 to 2011. But he is also widely loathed by the more hardline principle-ist clerics for his long-standing advocacy of detente with the US.

“It looks like Rafsanjani made a bad tactical mistake by thinking he was going to win and failing,” said Mina. “Before the vote on Tuesday, Rafsanjani’s followers were running a campaign to promote him, both through text-messaging, and through articles published in daily newspapers Arman and Jomhouri-ye Eslami and the IRNA news agency, all of which were re-published on Rafsanjani’s own website. But the Assembly of Experts in general is less transparent than the parliament, and they’re less affected in general by things that are going on in society at large.”

There was talk years ago in circles close to Rafsanjani of establishing a three-man leadership council when the leadership became vacant, presumably to gain the wily former president a seat on such a council, which is allowed as a temporary measure in the constitution.

Now surely Rafsanjani is too controversial and too old at 80 to be leader, although there are few places in Iranian politics where his political fingers never appear. But Yazdi’s election shows very clearly that Rafsanjani is not the only one seeking to influence the succession to Khamenei.

“The Resistance Front [a grouping of hardline principle-ists, including Mesbah-Yazdi] is determined to control the next Assembly of Experts and also to play a decisive role in selecting Khamenei’s successor,” said Mina. “This doesn’t mean they are going to nominate Mesbah-Yazdi himself as leader, but there are other people - like Sadegh Larijani, the judiciary chief, or Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami [Tehran’s 54-year-old substitute Friday prayer leader].”

The role of Larijani comes into sharper focus because it the apparent leaking of a judicial enquiry may have prompted Shahroudi’s withdrawal. Just 54, Larijani is a regime loyalist from a prominent religious family. But while a cleric he is not an ayatollah, and so far has been talked of less as a potential leader than as someone who might replicate the role Rafsanjani played behind the scenes in helping Khamenei secure his position when he succeeded Khomeini.

Much now depends on the results of next February’s election, and on how soon Khamenei vacates the top position. “The next Assembly of Experts will be younger than the current one,” said Mina. “I feel Larijani is interested in being a contender for leader. And Ayatollah Khatami is also still in his 50s.”

The article has been updated with a new headline.