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All 88 seats to the Assembly of Experts | ||||||||||
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 Composition of the Assembly following the election | ||||||||||
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The fourth Iranian Assembly of Experts election was held on 15 December 2006. The Assembly of Experts is a Council of 86 mujtahids that elect the Supreme Leader, and oversee his actions. The members of the Assembly are elected every eight years directly by the people of Iran.
The elections took place the same day as the City and Village Councils elections.
The credentials of being a Mujtahid were approved for all candidates by the Guardian Council using written and oral (interview) examinations. Some members of the Guardian Council also ran for the Assembly of Experts. Although there were a few female ayatollahs (Mujtahidehs) applying for candidacy, they could not pass the examination. The number of candidates which passed the examination was so low that the council had to lower the passing mark several times. There were initially 144 candidates for the 86 available seats. [1] [2] This was later increased, and according to Islamic Republic News Agency there were 181 qualified candidates. [2] [3] However, the number of candidates on the day of election was 165, and for the first time there were two non-cleric doctor of Islam candidate, although they were not elected. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
The Ministry of Interior reported an estimated 60% turnout of the 46.5 million eligible voters, [9] reporting "more than 28 million people" as the number of voters who had voted. [10] Different parties had several candidates in common, but Baztab News reported that the candidate list announced by the Combatant Clergy Association captured most of the seats (68 of 86 seats, while introducing 81 candidates). Reformists backed by Mahdi Karroubi and conservative associates of Mesbah Yazdi failed to live up to their expectations. [4] [11]
Of particular note was the victory of the pragmatist list led by Ayatollah Rafsanjani, over hard-line candidates associated with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani had lost out to Ahmadinejad in the runoff of the 2005 election for president. Yet Rafsanjani won nearly twice as many votes as President Ahmadinejad's mentor, hard-liner Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi. Final results for the Assembly of Experts showed that more than 65 candidates close to Rafsanjani were elected. At 60 percent, voter turnout was much higher than in previous years.
The Assembly convened on 19 February 2007 and Ali Meshkini was re-elected as chairman. The changes in the presiding board from the 3rd assembly were the replacement of Mohammad Yazdi with Ebrahim Amini, who retired, as the 2nd deputy chairman; and election of Hassan Rohani as a provisionist. [12] [13]
After the disputed results of the June 2009 Iranian presidential election were certified by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Chairman Rafsanjani was reported to have called a meeting of the Assembly of Experts, as the Assembly has the constitutional power to hire and fire the Supreme Leader. [14] On 8 March 2011, Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani replaced Ayatollah Rafsanjani as chairman. [15] Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani died in October 2014. [16] On 10 March 2015 the Assembly voted in Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi to be the next Chairman. [17]
The term begun in 2007 shall allegedly last ten years (rather than the regular eight) due to the "election aggregation" plan of the government, put in place to allow the government to run elections simultaneously for the Assembly of Experts and the Parliament, thereby economizing election administration costs.
Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei is an Iranian Twelver Shia marja' and politician who has served as the second supreme leader of Iran since 1989. He previously served as third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest-serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Ali Akbar Hashimi Bahramani Rafsanjani was an Iranian politician and writer who served as the fourth president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. One of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, Rafsanjani was the head of the Assembly of Experts from 2007 until 2011 when he decided not to nominate himself for the post. He was also the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council.
The Assembly of Experts, also translated as the Assembly of Experts of the Leadership or as the Council of Experts, is the deliberative body empowered to appoint the Supreme Leader of Iran. All directly elected members must first be vetted by the Guardian Council.
Ali Akbar Feiz Aleni, better known as Ali Meshkini, was an Iranian cleric and politician.
Presidential elections were held in Iran 17 June 2005, with a second round run-off on 24 June. Mohammad Khatami, the outgoing president of Iran, stepped down on 2 August 2005, after serving his maximum two consecutive four-year terms according to the Islamic republic's constitution.
Mohammad Yazdi was an Iranian conservative and principlist cleric who served as the head of Judiciary System of Iran between 1989 and 1999. In 2015, he was elected to lead Iran's Assembly of Experts, defeating Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, by a vote count of 47 to 24.
Muhammad Taqi Misbah YazdiGiwachi was an Iranian Shia scholar, political theorist and philosopher who served as the spiritual leader of the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability.
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Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi is an Iranian politician. He was a "senior adviser" to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and deputy interior minister for political affairs. He is said to have "strong ties to the Revolutionary Guard Corps and to the intelligence services" and to be "a constant presence at the president's side, in every cabinet meeting and during midday prayers at the office..." and acting "more as a cross between Iran's Karl Rove and a [American] president's chief of staff."
The parliamentary election for the 9th Islamic Consultative Assembly, or Majlis, were held in Iran on Friday, 2 March 2012 with a second round on 4 May 2012 in those 65 districts where no candidate received 25% or more of the votes cast. More than 5,000 candidates registered but more than a third were disqualified by the Guardian Council leaving about 3,400 candidates to run for the 290 seat representing the 31 provinces.
The fifth Iranian Assembly of Experts election were held in Iran on 26 February 2016 to elect the members of the Assembly of Experts. All 88 members of the Assembly of Experts, who are known as mujtahids, are directly elected. The elections had been planned for 2014, but were delayed in order for the election to be held alongside the Islamic Consultative Assembly elections.
This is a summary of the electoral history of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an Iranian politician who was member of Assembly of Experts from Tehran Province since 1982 and Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council since 1989, and has been previously Chairman of the Assembly of Experts (2007–2011), President of Iran (1989–1997), and The Speaker and member of Islamic Consultative Assembly (1980–1989) from Tehran and Minister of Interior (1979–1980).
The Council for Coordinating the Reforms Front or the Reformist Front Coordination Council is the umbrella organization, coalition and council of main political groups within the Iranian reform movement. Since 2015, it is overseen by the Reformists' Supreme Council for Policy-making.
People's Experts is an electoral list published by former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to compete against the conservative Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom in the 2016 Iranian Assembly of Experts election.
The second Iranian Assembly of Experts election was held on October 8, 1990, to elect all 83 members in 24 constituencies. The election was the first election of the assembly since Ayatollah Khomeini's death and election of Ali Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader. This election had the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran with 37.09% of the eligible voters participating.
Sheikh Abbas Ali Akhtari was an Iranian Ayatollah. He represented the Supreme Leader of Iran in Semnan province, while also serving as the Imam of Friday Prayer in Semnan. He also represented the people in Khorasan province in the early 80's for the first term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly. He later represented the people of Tehran province for the seventh term of the Iranian Parliament. He was a member of Assembly of Experts, from February 2021 to October 2022 in the fifth term of the Assembly of Experts, after the death of Nasrallah Shah-Abadi. He was elected in the first midterm elections of the Assembly of Experts on 23 February 2020.
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