Free Republic

Ahmad Jannati has been chosen to lead Iran’s new assembly of experts, the body which oversees the work of the country’s supreme leader and will elect his successor. Jannati was voted chairman of the 88-member Assembly with 51 votes. The 90-year-old is said to be dismissive of President Hassan Rouhani and his attempts to end Iran’s global isolation by normalizing ties with the West. He is also the leader of the Guardian Council, a hardline vetting body that disqualified thousands of reformists from standing in February’s elections for the assembly and parliament. …

Iran has selected a new figure to head its national Assembly of Experts, a body that governs the tenure of the Supreme leader, state news agency FARS reported on Tuesday. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a cleric who had served as the head of Iran's Judiciary branch between 1989 and 1999, was among other candidates considered for the position, both of whom are senior clerics in the Islamic Republic's regime and hold the title of Ayatollah. Yazdi's selection to this new position comes in light of reports that the current Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who suffers from stage four prostate cancer, was...

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani lost his position as head of an important state clerical body on Tuesday, a move which tightens the hardliners' grip on power. -excerpt- An ambush challenge by arch hard-liner Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani forced Rafsanjani to withdraw from running for re-election as chairman of the Assembly of Experts. The 86-member clerical body has the authority to dismiss Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 71, but it has never exercised that power since it was established in 1983. It also appoints the new leader if the old one is removed or dies.

"It is not possible that only one person run the country. There have to be laws and the Supreme Leader is also in the law. There have to be a law because one person cannot rule 70 million people." Ayatollah Dastgheyb, senior religious figure and a member of the Assembly of Experts, for the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution while criticizing the current situation of the country said: Armed force should not interfere in political affairs, but it seems like today all the affairs of the country is in the hands of Revolutionary Guards and police and people have no...

TEHRAN — Gunmen shot dead a prominent Iranian cleric on Thursday in the northwest province of Kurdistan, the official IRNA news agency reported, in the latest attack to shake the region. Mullah Mohammed Sheikh Olislam, who represents the province in Iran's top clerical body the Assembly of Experts, was shot twice in the head by unknown attackers at a mosque in Sanandaj, Kurdistan's main city.

SNIPPET: "Thursday's report says Mohammad Sheikholeslam was killed at the gate of his house. The cleric represented the province in the Assembly of Experts, a key religious body entrusted by law with appointing and dismissing Iran's supreme leader."

Vast majority of Iranian lawmakers vote to move up presidential elections by 18 months, final say on matter up to Ahmadinejad's arch-rival. Will Ahmadinejad's term be cut short? The Iranian parliament voted on Sunday to unite the presidential elections with the upcoming parliamentary ones, this according to the official Iranian news agency. The proposal, which passed with a surprising 80 percent majority, may cut the term of sitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by 18 months. The bill must still be ratified by the Iranian constitutional committee, which is headed by former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's arch-rival, a fact which many...