and is supposed to supervise him, has often been accused of being a toothless, do-nothing organization.
It meets twice a year, hears some speeches, and then quietly adjourns.
Now, the new chairman of the body says it would be acceptable to issue warnings to the Supreme Leader. But he didn’t show any interest in issuing such warnings and spoke of the need to show respect for the Supreme Leader.
Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi-Kani, now 81, was elected chair of the 86-member Assembly of Experts over a year ago. He replaced Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who had chaired the body almost two decades, when Rafsanjani retired after recognizing that Mahdavi-Kani would defeat him in an open election.
Mahdavi-Kani was also the chief clerical sponsor of the United Principleists Front, the largest bloc of conservatives to win election in the Majlis balloting this year.
On the issue of how the all-cleric Assembly should deal with the Supreme Leader, Mahdavi-Kani said in a speech Sunday, “Supervising the Leader is aimed at safeguarding him; the leader should be protected.” He did not speak of protecting the interests of the country, a point some noted.
Mahdavi-Kani said, “Certainly, safeguarding can be done through a warning sometimes, but that does not mean that respect should not be kept and boundaries recognized.”
He said there was a need for “consultations” on the Supreme Leader’s performance, something critics of the Assembly say it has never done. “If we want the [Islamic] system to be preserved, we should take consultations into consideration,” he said, according to the Mehr news agency.
But he seemed to define consultations as the routine of an official meeting with others to discuss the pros and cons of policies rather than the Assembly taking any initiative with the Supreme Leader. Mahdavi-Kani said that Ayatollah Khomeini himself believed in consultations. “He never said: ‘I have this opinion.’ He always stressed the need to consult experts.” Mahdavi-Kani explained.