Parliament Elects Its Leadership; 'Majority Faction' Opposes Women's Participation

On the day the Islamic Consultative Assembly elected its leadership for the last time in this term, a member of the 'Islamic Revolution Faction,' which is considered the majority in the Assembly, announced the members' opposition to women's participation in the leadership of Iran's legislative body. Shiva Ghasempour, a member of the 'Women’s Faction' of the Assembly, stated that several female representatives expressed their readiness to participate, including for 'oversight,' but were not voted for by the 'Islamic Revolution Faction' for leadership positions. In response to the fact that the leadership of this institution has repeatedly had a single-gender composition, she remarked: 'The place of women' in the Assembly's leadership 'is empty.' Currently, all '12 members' of the Assembly's leadership, including the president, vice presidents, secretaries, and overseers, have been elected from among male members of this body, as in previous years. The elections for the leadership of the Islamic Consultative Assembly for the fourth session of the eleventh parliament and its final year were held today, during which members of the leadership, including the president, vice presidents, and secretaries, were elected. According to official Iranian news agencies, in this session, 'Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf' was elected as president, and 'Abdolreza Masri and Mojtaba Zolnour' were elected as vice presidents. The counting of votes for the second vice president of the Assembly, which had to be selected between Ali Nikzad, the current vice president, and Mojtaba Zolnour, his rival, was accompanied by tensions. Due to a tie in the initial count between Zolnour and Nikzad, their votes were recounted, and ultimately, Mojtaba Zolnour was elected as the second vice president of the eleventh Assembly in the fourth session. Mojtaba Zolnour, the new vice president of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, has a background in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and previously served as the chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission in both the previous and current parliaments. He is currently considered a prominent member of the 'Front of Islamic Stability,' a group that emerged during Ahmadinejad's presidency among the 'principlists' and sought to promote a fundamentalist approach in the Islamic Republic with the support of clerics like Taghi Mesbah Yazdi. According to these reports, 'Nizamuddin Mousavi, Mohsen Pirhadi, and Alireza Salimi' were elected as overseers of the leadership, and 'Ahmad Nadri, Mohammad Rashidi, Seyyed Mohsen Dehnavi, Rouhollah Motafakker Azad, Ali Karimi Firouz Jaei, and Mojtaba Yousefi' were elected as secretaries of the leadership. The Islamic Revolution Faction, whose majority list was voted for during the leadership elections, had previously supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government in the eighth Assembly and, in the eleventh Assembly, backed Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the current president of this body, and voted for him. Some representatives have requested from Khamenei to 'determine the status' of the oversight body of the Expediency Discernment Council. A new challenge in the 'SUVs' case; a parliament member: announce the results of the investigations before the 'leadership elections.' Disagreement over the right to 'legislation'; the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution: the university entrance exam resolution has nothing to do with the Assembly.