Expert Council Elections and the Possibility of a Blacklist

Finally, the Guardian Council published the final list of qualified candidates for the fifth round of the Assembly of Experts elections. 161 candidates were approved and can start their campaigns for two weeks. The Guardian Council, during the review of complaints, reinstated three individuals who had previously been disqualified, such as Mohammad Taghi Pourmohammadi, a current member of the Assembly and Friday prayer leader of Maragheh, but rejected eight of the initially approved candidates, including Mohammad Mousavi Vaez, a current member from East Azerbaijan Province, and Abbas Ghaem Maqami and Hadawi Tehrani, reducing the number of candidates eligible to participate in the elections from 166 to 161. As expected, the final list did not undergo significant quantitative or qualitative changes. The final arrangement of candidates follows the same pattern of disqualification in the preliminary stage, categorized into reformists, women, Sunnis, hardline and traditional conservatives, and current members of the Assembly. The competitive range of the Assembly elections is very narrow, with nearly two candidates competing for each seat. In fact, it is a quasi-election. In six provinces of the country, the competitive range is zero, and the approved candidates, thanks to the Guardian Council's supervisory oversight, will directly enter the fifth Assembly. The severity of the scrutiny, the stark distance from the minimal requirements of an election, and the ambiguous criteria and double standards in assessing the jurisprudential expertise of candidates are so great that even Nejatollah Ebrahimi, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, implicitly criticized the performance of his institution. He stated that disqualified candidates did not have sufficient opportunity to defend themselves, claiming that the supervisory oversight and assessment of candidates' jurisprudential qualifications had not been announced by Ahmad Jannati among the 12 members of the Guardian Council, and that, in a way, the jurists decided independently based on an unknown mechanism. The table below specifies the arrangement of candidates for the Assembly in terms of political inclination by province. Reformists and moderates have eight candidates. Hassan Khomeini was the most notable disqualified candidate affiliated with this faction. Independents, which include unknown forces not affiliated with the two main factions of the regime, constitute a total of 27 candidates. Conservatives have 125 candidates. Therefore, 37 of the mentioned candidates are outside the list of the Qom Seminary Teachers Association and the Combatant Clergy Association of Tehran. However, some of them may withdraw during the campaign period to increase the victory rate of the Jam'eh-tin list and avoid parallel competition. As seen in the table, in the provinces of Bushehr, Hormozgan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Semnan, and North Khorasan, the competition is at zero, and the candidates automatically enter the Assembly. The number of these representatives, all belonging to conservatives, constitutes 11% of the total composition of the fifth Assembly. In the provinces of Alborz, Ilam, Khuzestan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Qazvin, Qom, Kermanshah, Lorestan, Kurdistan, Hamadan, and Yazd, only conservative candidates exist, and internal competition determines the fate of the elected representatives of these regions. The percentage of representatives from these provinces is 26% of the total. Therefore, before the elections, conservatives already hold 37% of the fifth Assembly, which is more than one-third of the seats. It is sufficient for the Jam'eh-tin to be able to bring 14 more candidates from their list into the Assembly to take the majority. Thus, they and the dominant power structure have an easy task of maintaining the status quo in the Assembly and its ceremonial function. However, the matter does not end here. Despite the severe closure of the fifth Assembly elections, there are openings for forming a minority faction with limited influence that could potentially challenge the authoritarian forces and play a role in the process of determining the successor to the Supreme Leader. However, realism dictates that high expectations should not be held; this faction can change the balance of power in the Assembly only slightly, but it does not have the ability to change its current neutral stance, and as long as Ali Khamenei is alive, it is unlikely to activate the supervisory function of the Assembly. Despite the severe closure of the fifth Assembly elections, there are openings for forming a minority faction with limited influence that could potentially challenge the authoritarian forces and play a role in the process of determining the successor to the Supreme Leader. Therefore, the intended influence is not to change the composition of the Assembly and its current stance but to weaken the forces affiliated with the Jam'eh-tin and prevent the entry of their generals. The next goal is to form a faction consisting of reformists, moderates, independents, and second-tier conservatives to cast votes in a negative and positive manner to balance the Assembly. This faction, given the good relationship of some future conservative representatives with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, could play a role. This role is not aligned with the government-centered reform strategy but could become an opportunity to weaken the repressive apparatus and strengthen the democracy-seeking movement. The principle of the Guardianship of the Jurist is problematic under any circumstances due to the concentration of power, and the personal inclination of the Supreme Leader, whether moderate or hardline, does not have a decisive impact on preventing this destructive role in political development and the people's sovereignty over their destiny. However, a change in the interpretation of the theory of the Guardianship of the Jurist could provide a tactical and situational opportunity for sustainable change in the political arena. The fifth Assembly elections could, for the first time, introduce a blacklist and a negative-protest vote into electoral actions in Iran's history. In this context, it is possible to prevent the presence of conservative generals like Ahmad Jannati (a symbol of supervisory oversight), Mohammad Yazdi (a symbol of religious despotism), Mohammadreza Modarresi Yazdi (a symbol of the Guardian Council's destructive interference), Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi (a symbol of promoting religious violence) in Tehran, Sadegh Larijani (a symbol of an unjust judiciary) in Mazandaran, Seyyed Ahmad Khatami (a symbol of extremism) in Kerman, Seyyed Ahmad Alamolhoda (a symbol of belligerence) in Razavi Khorasan, and also Friday prayer leaders in areas where competition is possible. Of course, alternative individuals do not differ significantly from these individuals in terms of principles and fundamentals. However, symbolically, the failure of these individuals to enter the Assembly would mean a referendum on the rejection of the close associates and appointees of the Supreme Leader by the Iranian people. This event practically reveals the legitimacy crisis of the authoritarians. The past shows that conservative representatives of the Assembly who had good personal relationships with Rafsanjani did not generally accompany him during external pressures. From the perspective of affirmative votes, the fifth Assembly elections have limited capacity in terms of quantity and quality. The ceiling for obtaining Assembly seats by reformists, moderates, and independents is 33. If we realistically assume that in conditions of over 60% participation in the Assembly elections, 65% of this group wins, Rafsanjani could have a faction with 23 representatives. In a situation where there is also the possibility of selecting second-tier conservatives and his good personal relationships with nearly 20% of the conservative representatives of the Assembly, he could have limited maneuvering space in the Assembly and perhaps play a role at the appointed time. Of course, this scenario is not certain and faces risks. Independents may be absorbed by the Qom Seminary Teachers Association after victory or intimidated by security forces. Conservative generals may change their electoral districts. There is a possibility that independent and conservative candidates outside the Jam'eh-tin list may be pressured to withdraw from the elections. Furthermore, the past shows that conservative representatives of the Assembly who had good personal relationships with Rafsanjani did not generally accompany him during external pressures. However, in the uncertain future compared to the current situation, evaluating the feasibility of actively engaging with the Assembly elections in a pragmatic approach is worthwhile. However, the realization of this possibility requires mobilizing and accompanying the protesting sections of society, voting in a complete list in the desired cities, and actively engaging critical and opposing political forces. Otherwise, the regime's plan in the Assembly elections will be realized, and the Jam'eh-tin will hold an absolute majority of the seats, leaving the reformist-moderate bloc and Rafsanjani in the fifth Assembly in a much weaker position than in previous periods.