Hashemi Shahroudi, the Unsuccessful Waiter of the Leadership

Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, head of the Expediency Discernment Council, passed away at the age of seventy after a two-year battle with severe illness. The exact cause of his illness has not been clearly identified. His close associates mentioned a digestive issue, suggesting a tumor in his intestines. However, German media indicated the presence of a brain tumor during his brief treatment in Hanover, Germany. Regardless of the cause of death for this Iraqi of Iranian descent, it does not change the fact that the life file of one of the potential successors to Khamenei has been closed during the lifetime of the second Supreme Leader. Shahroudi was born in Najaf, Iraq. His father, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Shahroudi, was born in Iran and had settled in Najaf with his father. Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Shahroudi was a special student of Ayatollah Khoei and was a traditional and non-political cleric who explained some of his lessons. Shahroudi's mother was the daughter of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Madadi Mousavi Qayeni, a religious scholar from South Khorasan and originally Iranian. In his youth, after finishing high school, Shahroudi turned towards traditional religious education and studied basic and advanced lessons in the Najaf seminary under Ayatollahs such as Abul-Qasim Khoei, Mohammad Baqir Sadr, Ruhollah Khomeini, Mowhidi Isfahani, and Kazem Haeri, and at a young age, he reached Ijtihad with a written permit from Seyyed Mohammad Baqir Sadr. Shahroudi was a close and special student of Mohammad Baqir Sadr, who, while maintaining a traditional view of religion, had a social and political approach to reconstructing the concepts of Shiite jurisprudence in contemporary times and wrote books such as 'Iqtisadna' and 'Falsafatna' in this regard. Shahroudi grew up in a discourse that rejected modernity and non-religious schools, claiming the sufficiency of Shiite jurisprudence in responding to contemporary needs and forming a political and social system. Of course, Seyyed Mohammad Baqir Sadr initially did not have political activities, and the most knowledgeable reference after Ayatollah Hakim was introduced as Ayatollah Khoei, who did not claim to establish a religious government and upheld the traditional separation of political and juristic authority in the seminaries. However, towards the end of the Shah's rule, Sadr's students, including Shahroudi, became political in Iraq, especially in the fight against communists. This led to Shahroudi being imprisoned for a time in Iraq. After the Iranian Revolution, he entered Iran through Kuwait due to fears of renewed arrest and met with Ayatollah Khomeini. In this meeting, the leader of the Islamic Republic encouraged him to teach in the Qom seminary, and he became the liaison with Seyyed Mohammad Baqir Sadr, whom Khomeini wanted to remain in Iraq to lead the Shiites there. The flight of revolutionary Iraqi Shiites to Iran provided an opportunity for Shahroudi to organize the group of Iraqi immigrants against Saddam's regime in Iran, and the use of this capacity during the war led to his connection with senior officials of the Islamic Republic. Ruhollah Khomeini did not have a favorable view of Shahroudi and did not grant him any position. The Khomeini household and the left faction also had a position against Shahroudi from his time in Iraq, considering him aligned with the non-political clergy who had caused Khomeini distress. Ali Akbar Mohtashami's attack on him during the early days of his presidency over the judiciary is revealing in this regard. Ali Khamenei, who had been assigned by the founder of the Islamic Republic to launch Islamic movements, proposed the formation of the Supreme Council of Iraq. Shahroudi's presence at the head of this body and the community of fighting clerics in Iraq laid the groundwork for a close relationship between the two, which expanded after Khomeini's death. During this period, the Islamic Republic publicly introduced Shahroudi as Iraqi while, in contrast to Saddam's regime, it considered him Iranian and sought to discredit him among Iraqi Shiites. The Supreme Council of Iraq and the Iraqi immigrant forces, who fought alongside the IRGC against the Iraqi army, formed the backbone of the Shiites aligned with the Islamic Republic in the government and ruling structure of Iraq after the American invasion. The lack of high jurisprudential knowledge in Khamenei led to meetings being held to address this weakness of the second Supreme Leader, whose Ijtihad was questioned by experts, in order to create legitimacy for him. Additionally, Shahroudi became Khamenei's private jurisprudential tutor and claimed to be a discussion partner of Ayatollah Khamenei. Shahroudi played an active role in the project of establishing Khamenei as a marja'. These relationships accelerated Shahroudi's rise in the power hierarchy. In 1994, he became a member of the Guardian Council of Experts and then was appointed head of the judiciary in 1999. Although he initially claimed to have inherited a judicial ruin and asserted reforms, he ultimately did not bring about any meaningful change in the dire state of the judiciary, the institutionalized injustice within it, its dependence on the institution of the Supreme Leader, and its corruption by the influence of the powerful and wealthy. The mass closure of reformist and independent newspapers, the infamous 'overthrowers' case, the crackdown on national-religious individuals, journalists, women's activists, critical clergy, the Syndicate of Drivers of the Bus Company, and the student movement, the distortion of the Koo University case, the continuation of the execution machine's activity, the show trials of the chain murders, the security crackdown on bloggers, the bloody suppression of the Green Movement in its early months, and the weakening of the Bar Association's position are examples of his mismanagement in the judiciary. His citizen rights directive also remained at the level of rhetoric and slogans. Perhaps the reconstruction of the prosecutor's office and the separation of duties between judges and investigators were his most significant positive actions during his presidency. Additionally, contrary to the presidency of Sheikh Mohammad Yazdi, he curtailed the influence of the Motalefeh party in the judiciary, although individuals like Javad Larijani were later replaced. His efforts to remove Mortazavi from the judiciary also did not succeed. After the end of his term and the continued devastation in the judiciary, he returned to the Guardian Council. He also became the first deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts in its fourth term, having been a member since the second term. At the same time, he joined the fifth term of the Expediency Discernment Council as a real member, having been a legal member in the fourth term. It is rumored that he held strong views in the realm of jurisprudential theories regarding the necessity of harsh action against 'infidels' and did not consider actions in Islamic history, such as forgiving the people of Mecca, to be based on Islamic principles but rather a result of the Prophet Muhammad's pragmatic considerations. In 2011, by Khamenei's decree, he took over the presidency of the 'Dispute Resolution and Regulation of Relations between the Three Powers' committee, and since the activities of this committee were never taken seriously, his position in the power hierarchy weakened. His defeat in the elections for the presidency of the Assembly of Experts after the death of Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, which occurred under financial allegations, further destabilized Shahroudi's status. He remained the first deputy in the elections for the board of the fifth Assembly of Experts. During this period, he considered attending the Najaf seminary and expanding his position as a religious authority, and it seemed that the Islamic Republic had a project in this regard. He went to Iraq for a short time, which apparently did not have a promising outlook. However, sitting in the presidency of the Expediency Discernment Council after the death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani brought Shahroudi back to the top level of the power structure, especially since this time the council's powers had expanded both structurally and in terms of its responsibilities. He himself introduced the new function of the council as similar to the Senate. The Expediency Discernment Council, by directly entering the legislative domain within the framework of the necessity of aligning laws with the general policies of the system formulated in the council and approved by the leader, effectively weakened the parliament. However, just as the Expediency Discernment Council gained power, which could have been a launching pad for Shahroudi to rise to the upper echelons of power and possibly strengthen his chances of succession, death closed the file of his good fortune. Shahroudi's active presidency in the Expediency Discernment Council lasted less than ten months, and since the summer of this year, due to the worsening of his illness, he had been absent from council meetings, with Mohsen Rezaei managing council affairs. The consequences of Shahroudi's death Seyyed Mahmoud Shahroudi was a unique figure in the power structure of the Islamic Republic. Due to his traditional upbringing in the Najaf seminary, he personally avoided tension and conflict and sought to interact with groups within the system. At the same time, he maintained loyalty to Khamenei and the dominant power faction but generally refrained from taking harsh positions against reformists and Hashemi Rafsanjani unless the cost was high. He even did not express harsh statements against Mir Hossein Mousavi, claiming that he had convinced him in negotiations to end calls for protests on the condition of appearing on television and speaking to the people, which, according to him, 'the conspirators around him did not allow.' It was also rumored that he voted negatively against Rafsanjani's disqualification in the tenth presidential election and supported the approval of Hassan Khomeini's candidacy in the fifth Assembly of Experts elections. Overall, compared to extremist conservatives and clerics like Sheikh Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati, Seyyed Ahmad Khatami, and Sadegh Larijani, he was considered moderate, but he still fit within the framework of the authoritarian clergy, which holds a negative view of human rights, modernity, and democracy. It is rumored that he had strong views in the realm of jurisprudential theories regarding the necessity of harsh action against 'infidels' (in the sense of forces disbelieving in Islamic views) and did not consider actions in Islamic history, such as forgiving the people of Mecca and the leaders of Quraysh after the conquest of Mecca, to be based on Islamic principles but rather a product of the Prophet's pragmatic considerations. The consequences of his premature death can be examined in institutions such as the Expediency Discernment Council and the Assembly of Experts, and more importantly, in the future of the institution of the Supreme Leader after Khamenei. After his death, the possibility that the next Supreme Leader would be agreed upon by both conservatives and reformists significantly decreases. Shahroudi was one of the prominent candidates for Khamenei's succession. His outstanding jurisprudential status, which was agreed upon by both his supporters and political opponents, along with his history as head of the judiciary and membership in the Guardian Council and his relatively young age in the clergy, were his advantages. He himself had invested heavily in this matter to the extent that his office published a poster of him alongside Khomeini and Khamenei in 2015. Although his defeat in the Assembly of Experts presidency elections reduced his chances, in the turbulent and surprising political scene of Iran, he still had the chance to become the third Supreme Leader. With his death, successors to Khamenei are likely to lean more towards hardline conservatives and their radical layers. While Shahroudi was within the framework of conservatives, he had relative independence, and especially his high jurisprudential status allowed him to keep himself somewhat distanced from the influence of power centers. He also had minimal interactions with moderates and reformists. Of course, during the reformist government, his relations were strained, but after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency, relations moved towards détente. After his death, the possibility that the next Supreme Leader would be agreed upon by both conservatives and reformists significantly decreases. Additionally, the institution of the Supreme Leader cannot find an individual with a position and jurisprudential knowledge similar to his. None of the potential candidates have his credibility, fame, and mastery in jurisprudential and religious discussions. In the Expediency Discernment Council, Shahroudi's absence will lead to a stronger dominance of hardline conservatives. It is unlikely that his successor will be someone who has similar or greater interactive relations with reformists and the moderate faction of the Islamic Republic. In the Assembly of Experts, there will not be much impact, and it can be expected that Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Mohammadi Kermani will become the first deputy. From another perspective, the death of Seyyed Mahmoud Shahroudi can be seen as an important event for Iraqi immigrants of Iranian descent (Muawwad), as they have lost their strongest force in the Iranian government, which could have one day stood at the highest point of the power hierarchy of the Islamic Republic.