February 2, 2024
The Council of Guardians,as widely expected, has made the upcoming Majlis and Assembly of Experts elections a nullity by barring almost everyone who is not a regime toady from running.
The 12-man Council made that clear to all when it rejected President Hassan Rohani’s candidacy for a seat in the Assembly of Experts, the body that elects a new Supreme Leader when that post falls vacant. The incumbent, Ali Khamenehi, is 84 years old and so it is likely the Assembly to be elected to an eight-year term on March 1 will be the one to choose the next Supreme Leader.
The Council further cemented its desire to determine outcomes when it approved only one person to run for the one Assembly seat from South Khorasan province. And that one person is President Ebrahim Raisi.
Rohani has been a member of the 88-cleric assembly for three terms or 24 years, but was found unqualified to be a member again. The Council of Guardians gave no explanation for rejecting Rohani’s candidacy this year after approving him as a candidate for the assembly three times before and as a candidate for president twice.
According to Iran International, the Council of Guardians also approved only one candidate for the one seat in Boyer Ahmad province, only three candidates for the three seats from Qazvin province, five candidates for the four seats from Gilan and Mazandaran provinces, and six candidates for the five seats from East Azerbaijan province. What’s more, it only approved four candidates in Shiraz province, which holds five seats in the Assembly of Experts. In total, only 138 candidates were approved to run for the 88 seats or an average of just 1.6 candidates per seat.
Various Reformists have said too few of their members have been approved to put together a slate of 30 candidates for the 30 Majlis seats from Tehran, even by resorting to unknown third-tier party participants. Some media reports said only 30 mid-ranking moderates had been approved nationwide as candidates. (In Tehran, every resident gets to vote for all 30 deputies representing the capital.)
The Council of Guardians initially approved 11,000 candidates for the 290 Majlis seats in December. In January, after hearing appeals from those rejected, it approved another 1,000 candidates. It is still reviewing some appeals and a few more candidates are expected to be approved but that is not expected to change the overall picture. The final list of candidates is to be released February 8.
With 12,033 candidates now, that would mean an average of 41 candidates per seat in the Majlis, the vast majority of whom would be complete unknowns. That is a much larger number than in previous Majlis elections, where a half dozen candidates per seat was the norm.
Few observers from either the conservative or reformist factions expect much of a turnout this year. Many are openly predicting that fewer than the 42 percent of eligible voters who came out four years ago will come out this time. Unlike in previous years, the regime is not calling for a massive turnout anymore. Previously, the regime always boasted about the huge turnout even if it wasn’t so massive and portrayed it as proof that the Islamic government was overwhelmingly popular.
In fact, the main electoral development this year may be the regime shift against having a mass voter turnout and instead focusing closely on having regime supporters dominating the ballot. In the past, allowing mild critics on the ballot has sometimes resulted in their dominating the Majlis. But since the Supreme Leader can stop everything they seek to do, they have invariably been unproductive and were turned out at the next election for being ineffective.
In a statement after his rejection, Rohani called the Council of Guardians “politically biased,” which few would deny. Addressing the 12 men who comprise the council, Rohani asked, “Why don’t you share with the people your reason for disqualifying me? You are not the owner of the revolution or the country.” He then bluntly charged, “The ruling minority overtly seeks to reduce public participation in elections,… intending to dictate the people’s fate through their decisions.”
He did not, however, call for any protests or mass public objection. He did not ask for any public reaction.
Earlier news reports quoted an aide to Rohani as saying that Rohani was trying to put together a slate of 16 candidates to run for all 16 seats from Tehran in the Assembly of Experts.
Rohani was not the only prominent cleric disqualified from running for the Assembly of Experts. Mahmud Alavi, a former intelligence minister, was also barred from running. Intelligence ministers are not selected by the president but rather by the Supreme Leader, so his rejection stunned observers.
Also, Mostafa Pur-Mohammadi, deputy intelligence minister under Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, interior minister under President Ahmadi-nejad and justice minister under President Rohani, was rejected. He is currently the head of the Combatant Clergy Association, a hardline political movement.
Many thought the fear was that prominent figures like this trio, with extensive experience in government, could overly influence the clerics with no experience whatsoever in government, who comprise the majority of the Assembly of Experts. Majlis Deputy Javad Karimi-Ghodusi, a conservative lawmaker, publicly complained that Rohani has “the ability and will” to influence votes in the Assembly of Experts.
A number of reformist parties are understood to be debating whether to boycott the March 1 Majlis elections as they did four years ago. But if the regime declines to make a big turnout a goal, it hardly matters whether they boycott the vote or not.
However, many voters will come out regardless because their internal passports are stamped when they vote and they fear being mistreated if no such stamp is seen when they present their IDs. So, some argue it is better to encourage everyone to go to the polls but to deposit a blank ballot in the ballot box. Blank ballots are counted.
The main political grappling is taking place within the conservative faction, which is expected to generate competing lists for the Majlis. The Sharyan group, comprised mainly of people holding posts in the Raisi Administration, is trying to counter Peydari, which started as the party backing President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad and is now the best-organized hardline group and the largest faction in the current Majlis. Peydari has distanced itself from Ahmadi-nejad since he had frictions with the Supreme Leader.
There are many other groupings, including Shana, under the general supervision of Gholam-Hossain Haddad-Adel, a former Majlis speaker. It has issued a program, which does not advocate any policies at all, declaring its goal as streamlining government and gaining access to government posts for its members!
Some Majlis observers say there are now eight distinct conservative groups, mainly distinguished by their leaders rather than by policy. That is in keeping with the historic nature of Iranian politics being primarily personality driven.
A spokesman for the Council of Guardians said that 26 of the 275 incumbent Majlis deputies who filed to run for re-election were rejected. He didn’t say why. The daily Etemad published the list of rejectees and said all but two were conservatives. One was Ahmad Alireza Beigi, an ultra-conservative who two years ago revealed that dozens of deputies had accepted SUVs as bribes to vote against firing one of Raisi’s cabinet ministers, a huge embarrassment for the regime.
Many think this election will mark a generational change as more and more of the old guard that came to power after 1979 are dying or retiring.
Others see the election as primarily determining whether Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, the Majlis speaker the last four years, will retain enough support to remain as speaker and to offset the power of those who serve in the Raisi Administration.
The state news agency said the Council of Guardians has approved the candidacy of Ali Motahari, a longtime activist deputy whose rejection four years ago brought much criticism down on the Council. Motahari started out as a strong conservative but became much more moderate over the years and might best be described as eclectic now.
The only prominent reformists to win approval are said to be Mohammad-Baqer Nobakht, head of the Plan and Budget Organization under President Rohani, and Masud Pezeshkian, who was also allowed to run the last time and who represents Tabriz in the Majlis, but who has not been active in this last Majlis.
One of the odder topics of debate surrounding the elections is whether women who refuse to cover their hair should be allowed to cast ballots. Council of Guardians spokesman Tahan Nazif made clear the highly conservative council felt they should be able to vote. “No one should be denied their right to vote,” he said. “The issue of hejab should not divide the people.”