True||The Council of Guardians, Iran’s constitutional watchdog, has set Feb. 26, 2016, as something of a day of reckoning.||

The Council of Guardians, Iran’s constitutional watchdog, has set Feb. 26, 2016, as something of a day of reckoning. It will see an election not only for the Iranian parliament, but also for the 86-seat Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing and supervising the supreme leader.

The occasion will gain from being the first time the two polls have been held together, a move designed to curb administrative costs. Both will be keenly contested, partly as a test of strength between supporters of President Hassan Rouhani’s government and its fundamentalist (or “Principlist”) opponents.

But there is a frisson in the expectation that the next Assembly of Experts, during its eight-year term, may chose a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 75 and last year underwent prostate surgery.

The contest for the succession heated up this week when the Assembly of Experts unexpectedly chose Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the 83-year-old former judiciary chief, as its chairman rather than Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, previously seen as the favorite of Khamenei.

Yazdi, who defeated former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by a vote of 47-26, appears to have won the support of the most hard-line figures in the assembly. While the composition of the assembly will change in February, this makes him the front-runner to be Iran’s next supreme leader.

It has been nearly half a century since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini reshaped the Shiite Muslim notion of Velayat-e Faqeh, or guardianship of the jurist, to envisage the pre-eminent religious scholar not just influencing rulers but taking a direct role in politics, a notion underlying the Islamic Republic established in 1979. Today the leader (rahbar) has both strong religious kudos and vast powers in running the country, including declaring war and appointing military commanders, the judiciary chief and the president of state broadcasting.

But the Assembly of Experts also reflects Iran’s way of mixing religious expertise with popular democracy. While only top religious scholars are eligible to stand, all Iranians 18 and over may vote. Turnout can be high – 60 percent in 2006 – as each province elects at least one member and more populous provinces more, up to Tehran’s 16. Any lists will be informal, with local factors in play.

Candidates are also vetted by the Council of Guardians, six of whose 12 members are appointed by the supreme leader, suggesting one way in which Khamenei may influence his own succession. Last time round, in 2006, the Council of Guardians barred most supporters of the hard-line Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, although Mesbah-Yazdi was himself elected in Tehran.

In the 26 years since he succeeded Khomeini, Khamenei has presided over many changes. While broadly sympathizing with the conservative camp, especially on cultural matters, and strongly backing the crackdown on unrest after the disputed 2009 presidential election, Khamenei has accepted direct talks with the United States, first over Iraq in 2006 and then over the nuclear program. His style has been to steer quietly or even await consensus within the political class.

But the current leader will play a central, if not always visible, role in shaping the emergence of his successor. “Khamenei has been an institution builder and wedding the office too much to himself would undermine the office,” Farideh Farhi, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told me. “It would certainly open up the possibility of undermining the office if he passed away without some sort of arrangement.”

Khamenei has preferred the conciliation of Rouhani to the unpredictability and truculence of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he will have no wish for the Assembly of Experts election to become too heated. He will not have enjoyed last year’s colorful warning from Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a hard-line Assembly member, of “a plot” to take over the body, presumably by reformists or centrists.

Some in Tehran believe Khamenei revealed a preference for his successor four years ago when he delegated to Ayatollah Shahroudi his own constitutional role of mediation between parliament, president and judiciary. This was a largely symbolic move, but it reflected Shahroudi’s good standing among religious figures and the wider conservative camp.

Nima Mina, a senior lecturer in Persian and Iranian studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, now believes Shahroudi’s attempts to win support from all conservative factions maybe have worked against him and led to the assembly this week preferring Yazdi as chair. “Maybe the fact that Shahroudi does have respectful relations with Rafsanjani and [former President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was used against him,” Mina told me.

Shahroudi had taken over as acting chair of the Assembly of Experts after Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani fell into a coma in June before his death in October.

And so this week’s vote for Yazdi has raised eyebrows.

At 66, Shahroudi remains younger than Yazdi, and with any succession to Khamenei perhaps many years off, the succession remains very uncertain.

But one possible explanation for Shahroudi standing down from the election of the chairman this week was the recent publication of a report that he is being investigated over financial irregularities.

Such things in Iran are rarely coincidental, and often have a political motive. Whoever becomes leader will need the equivalent of William Cecil to England’s Elizabeth I, or Amir Kabir to Naser al-Din Shah. “Khamenei himself needed this when he first became leader, as without the help of Rafsanjani he wouldn’t have survived,” Mina said. “Khamenei’s successor will also need somebody to assist him. I don’t know who, but somebody who is powerful, dynamic and influential.”

News of a judicial investigation of Shahroudi will remind many that one candidate for the role of Amir Kabir could be Sadeq Larijani, the chief justice, who has even been talked of as a potential leader himself.

Just 54, Larijani is not a senior religious scholar, but is a regime loyalist from a leading family of scholars. His truculent style has not endeared him to all, but despite the best laid plans of ayatollahs, Iranian politics has a tendency to throw up surprises.

Gareth Smyth has reported from the Middle East since 1992, and was chief Iran correspondent of

The Financial Times in 2003-07. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

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