Splitting off from the thread concerning the Iran nuclear deal, I see that Rohollah Faghihi, in a piece to AL Monitor, has covered the recent elections to Iran’s Assembly of Experts and draws some conclusions:
The man who was on the verge of being eliminated in the recent Assembly of Experts election has been elected as the chairman of the clerical body. Conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati won the May 24 vote with the backing of 51 of the assembly’s 89 members. …
After Jannati’s win in the chairmanship vote, the conservatives — shocked by the moderates’ victory in the Feb. 26 election — were revived and their media outlets and newspapers sought to portray the development as a big loss for the moderates and Rafsanjani, whose list was branded as “British” by the hard-liners ahead of the Feb. 26 election. …
Ultimately, the conservative mobilization appears to have been part of a bigger plan: to make people feel hopeless and thus lower the turnout in the upcoming 2017 presidential election. Apparently in response to the latter, Ahmad Shirzad, a Reformist analyst, told Iscanews, “The hard-liners’ moves cannot make the people lose hope, because the people have shown time and again that at times of high despair, they will come out and take part in elections — just like in the February [26] polls.”
The Assembly of Experts is responsible for supervising the Supreme Leader, including removal and replacement; however, candidates for the Assembly must be approved by the Guardian Council, which is selected by … the Supreme Leader. So there appears to be a certain symbolic importance to the Assembly, but perhaps not a practical importance. Still, the entire article makes clear that Iranian politics remains a complex subject.
