Monday 28 July 2014

We Will Block the Undesired Members of the Experts Assembly

Rooz Online

A cleric member of Iran’s powerful Guardians Council announced that the body would not approve the credentials of all the current members of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership (Majles Khobregan Rahbari) which is constitutionally charged with electing and supervising the work of the supreme leader of the country. He also revealed that members of the Assembly had intended to expel one of their current colleagues.

In the past few months, different Principlist group personalities had issued warnings about the forthcoming elections of the Assembly and that some political groups had plans to infiltrate the 86-man all-cleric body. The next elections for the Assembly are scheduled for December this year.

Speaking to a weekly magazine 9 Dey managed by a hardline Principlist group member Hamid Rasai, Momen said, “Determining whether a candidate qualifies to run for a seat at the Assembly is with the Guardians Council, as ruled by the Assembly itself. We completely investigate every candidate to ensure they are educated and have a hard test for this. Nobody is prevented from becoming a candidate but he must take the test. We also look into the candidate’s background to ensure they are not undesired individuals.”

He continued, “Someone may have a negative background and we will block him. So the test is not the only criteria (to be qualified to run). There is one such person in the Assembly right now and its members had decided to expel him. If he tries to run again we may try to block him. Having the required knowledge is not sufficient to run. The candidate must also be revolutionary.”

It appears that Momeni is talking about Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, the representative of Shiraz in the Experts Assembly. In 2009 when there was public uproar against the presidential elections, he stood up in support of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the leaders of the Green Movement who called for a recount of the votes on grounds of electoral fraud and were put under house arrest by authorities where they continue to be today. His position was objected by Principlists.

Dastgheib’s support of Mousavi and Karoubi brought forth rumors that he would be resigning from the Assembly. He has denied this but has said that he had not been invited to the next session of the body. Momeni now says that Dastgheib’s absence from the Assembly meetings is not the invitation letter but his own “shame.” “The situation is such that he himself is ashamed to come to the sessions. If Mr. Yazdi were in charge of the secretariat of the Assembly, it is possible he did not invite Dastgheib to the session,” Momeni said.

Principlists have recently said on a number of occasions that there are plans for the next elections for the Assembly and that harder criteria would be applied on the candidates for the elections to the body. Assadollah Badamchian, for example, a member of the Hezbe Motalefe Islami (Islamic Coalition Party) recently said, “The arrogance movement, along with its agents and groups, is busy now trying to infiltrate into the Assembly of Experts and is pursuing sly schemes. This is because the Assembly is the pillar of the revolution and the source of the velayat faghih (rule of clerics). They plan to get new members into the body. Reformers and reform-minded Principlists are busy creating networks for this goal. Our nation must be alert.”

It appears that the upcoming elections to the Assembly are important to the Principlists because the body may discuss and decide on the new supreme leader of the Islamic republic. This is something that Ghorbanali Dori-Najafabadi, the vice-chairman of the Assembly mentioned when he said, “God protect the supreme leader and give him a long life but we must also be thinking about the period after him.”

Kazem Sedighi, a Friday imam in Tehran also spoke about the concerns of the Principlists in this regard. He said there were “plans by the enemy to further infiltrate the revolution,” adding that they had to be alert.

Some months earlier, Ahmad Janati, the influential secretary of the Guardians Council echoed this view. Speaking to a group of Guardian Council observers in the city of Mashhad, he said that the upcoming elections to the Assembly “were very important” because a group was planning to take it over.” Janati had issued similar warnings last year too.

Javad Karimi Ghodoosi, a member of the Steadfast Front (an umbrella organization of the hardline Principlists) went as far as claiming that there was a list of 50 individuals drawn up by Hashemi Rafsanjani as candidates for the Assembly of Experts. “This group along with Mr. Khatami – former president Mohammad Khatami – are after capturing the Assembly and have prepared a list of 50 individuals to get into the Assembly,” he warned.

Khabar Online, belonging to Hossein Entezami, the deputy minister of Islamic Guidance in Hassan Rouhani’s administration who is also close to Majlis speaker Ali Larijani read out a report in the Majlis in February in which he said that the new battleground between the Principlists and reformers would be the elections for the Assembly of Experts. He said, “Reformers are pursuing a step-by-step strategy and have devised a serious plan to capture seats in the Majlis and the Assembly of Experts. Preparing the groundwork for Hashemi Rafsanjani to return as the chairman of the Assembly is perhaps the clearest aspect of the strategy of the reformers.”

According to Khabar Online, Rafsanjani plans to convince Hassan Rouhani and Hassan Khomeini to run in the Assembly of Experts elections. Reformers too are busy trying to convince Hassan Khomeini to run.

Such reports have brought forth responses from Principlists. Raja News, a website close to the Steadfast Front (with members from the hardline principlist groups) described the efforts of the reformers in these words: “The dangerous pursuit of some political groups to reduce the elections to the Assembly to the level of political infighting is an important subject that requires a serious political response.” The website quotes ayatollah Khamenei on the subject who had said, “The Assembly of Experts is not a political field but a spiritual field. It is a place for doing work for God and protecting the fundamental principles of the revolution. All the members of the Assembly, including its leadership, but pay attention to these important points. They must wisely neutralize the dangerous propaganda of the regime. The Assembly cannot be a place for battles and power struggle. But some domestic media in the last two months have followed the fabricated propaganda of the enemies. I warn them not to get close to the Assembly of Experts and pursue these issues in other places.”

Assembly of Expert elections are held once every eight years.

In addition to overseeing the work of the supreme leader, there has been talk that the Assembly should also monitor and oversee the work of the agencies under the direct control and management of the supreme leader. This was raised for the first time by Abbas Nabavi, a faculty member of Imam Khomeini Institute affiliated with ultra-conservative cleric Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi. He revealed that Mr. Khamenei had written a letter to the Committee Monitoring the Work of the Leader in the Assembly of Experts that the monitoring work of the Assembly was confined only to reviewing the general conditions of the supreme leader.

Nabavi had said that Mr. Khamenei had written, “If the conditions (of the supreme leader) are harmed, then they (the Assembly) should come and identify this so that it becomes clear whether a deviation has occurred or not. If not, then I do not accept that you (the Assembly) should look into the details.

Some other Assembly members too had said that the leader had prevented officials from the agencies under his direct control from going to the Assembly to provide explanations of their work.

Rafsanjani on the other hand had told Hokoomate Islami - a publication of the Assembly of Experts - that the Assembly had assumed that anything related to the supreme leader was the legitimate domain of the Assembly oversight. The officials of these agencies could be summoned to the Assembly for explanations. He added that this had been “discussed and turned into a law. But when some officials from these agencies were summoned to come to the Assembly to present a report of their work, the office of the supreme leader prevented them from coming and said that the leader believed that these are not in the jurisdiction of the Assembly members.”

Ahmad Janati too had spoken on this. “Many members of the Assembly believed that investigative groups should look into the work of the agencies under the control of the supreme leader to ensure that they are working properly. This was raised with the supreme leader and discussed. This is what the majority wanted. But the supreme leader did not agree with this. Regarding the armed forces he had said, ‘Don’t even mention it because there is no possibility of investigating or asking. The armed forces are not a place for such talk. Commanders will not be able to do their work if this happens.’ In any case, he disagreed with this issue during the two or three sessions we had with him.”




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