The Assembly of Experts: A Gathering or a Handpicked Group?

The Assembly of Experts is politically a gathering of clergy who believe in the leadership of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (handpicked by the Guardian Council) that occasionally comes together, prays for the leader, and approves all his actions (instead of overseeing him); they also hurl some insults at 'internal enemies' and global arrogance to justify the privileges of the clergy. The elections for this assembly are also a show for domestic and international public opinion that 'all branches of the system are elected by the people' without the details of these elections and their internal mechanisms being clear to many Iranian and non-Iranian citizens. In previous terms, in many electoral districts, only one candidate has been introduced for a seat for people to pledge allegiance to. However, some members of this gathering, like Ali Mohammad Dashti and Hashemi Rafsanjani, may be sidelined in power struggles but do not differ much in beliefs and behaviors from other members. To clarify the political structure of this assembly and its economic functions and abuses of power, it suffices to look at the dimensions of its formation, elections, and the performance of its members. The manner of conducting the jurisprudential exam - which the Guardian Council holds for candidates of the Assembly of Experts - has not aligned with the standards of any exam. For example, in the exam of December 2015, some candidates brought mobile phones and books to the session and had the opportunity to communicate with the outside. Most observers and organizers of the exam were relatives of two members of the Guardian Council, namely Mohammad Momen and Mohammad Mahdi Shabzendeh. Ali Momen, the son of Mohammad Momen, was a senior organizer of the exam and was also a candidate for the Assembly of Experts from Markazi Province. He was announcing some reminders related to the exam. The children and sons-in-law of Shabzendeh were also among the organizers. When the organizer of the exam is also a competitor of the candidates, it is clear how much trust can be placed in the results. The exam was suspended at noon prayer time, and participants could easily converse with each other. One of the exam participants said: 'During the ablution, a conversation broke out, especially since there were three semi-jurisprudential questions; one about prayer and the other about ablution. It is surprising and objectionable that during prayer and ablution, the exam conditions were not preserved.' (Alef, January 5, 2016) Such an exam is only held to form a political gathering without any specific criteria. Five members of the Guardian Council who are supposed to oversee the elections of the Assembly of Experts are themselves candidates for this election. According to Note 4 of Article 11 of the Executive Regulations of the Assembly of Experts Election Law, 'If members of the Guardian Council become candidates for the Assembly of Experts, they cannot oversee and make decisions regarding the elections in the province from which they have become candidates.' Thus, Ahmad Jannati, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Mohammad Momen, Mohammad Reza Modarresi, and Mohammad Yazdi, who are candidates from Tehran, Mashhad, Qom, Tehran, and Tehran respectively, do not have the right to oversee and make decisions regarding the elections in their respective provinces. According to the same regulations (Articles 15 and 16), the Guardian Council is responsible for approving the qualifications of candidates for the Assembly of Experts. The six clerical members of this council, five of whom are candidates themselves, are supposed to reject or approve the qualifications of their competitors, but according to the regulations, they cannot oversee in the three provinces of Tehran, Qom, and Razavi Khorasan. Can it be imagined that when the Guardian Council is reviewing the qualifications of candidates, these five will leave the meeting? Has such an event ever happened in Iran? Does the Guardian Council publish the minutes and names of attendees at each meeting? If three of them leave the meeting (the three who have become candidates) and the number of clerics in this council falls below the majority, will the resolutions be ignored or voting halted? The answer to these questions is negative. Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Guardian Council, says: 'Yesterday, one of the four references [Ministry of Intelligence, Civil Registration, Law Enforcement, and Judiciary] referred the files of 63 candidates for the Assembly of Experts to us, according to which some of these individuals are gamblers and alcoholics, and others have ethical issues.' (Alef, January 4, 2016) Given the very narrow filter of the Guardian Council for candidates of the Assembly of Experts, why should individuals who Jannati claims are gamblers, alcoholics, and 'problematic' (assuming his accusations are correct) register for this election? These individuals are certainly not clergy close to the reformist faction (like Montajabnia, Hassan Khomeini, and Mahmoud Amjad) because if they were alcoholics and gamblers, their files would have been opened in government media, and they would have faced the Special Court for Clergy. They are also not among the non-clerics who have registered since the Secretary of the Guardian Council did not mention this point in his remarks. Thus, the only remaining aspect is that these 'problematic' clerics are close to power circles and have confidently entered this election relying on their networks. According to the Attorney General, 'the crime rate in the clergy organization is only one percent.' (Tabnak, January 4, 2016) If we take this statistic as a criterion, considering there are about 400,000 to 500,000 clerics in the country, the number of clerics who have had cases opened against them in the Special Court is about 4,000 to 5,000. The number of clerics who commit crimes using privileges and escaping the law must be several times this number. Of course, in the view of the Special Court for Clergy, crime is not the abuse of power and use of privileges, but rather ethical and political violations that are ignored regarding the close associates of high-ranking clerics. In the matter of confirming the qualifications of Hassan Khomeini, the Guardian Council faced a serious challenge. On the one hand, it wanted to show that the Assembly of Experts is formed based on jurisprudential criteria (which also means that jurisprudence is sufficient for governing society). For this reason, individuals like Hassan Khomeini, who did not participate in the jurisprudential exam, should be disqualified. However, on the other hand, a group of clerics with a clerical supremacy perspective wanted Hassan Khomeini, as the heir of Ruhollah Khomeini, to have a presence in governing institutions. Vahid Khorasani said in this regard: 'If they have an interest in Mr. Khomeini, they should preserve his offspring; if they understand that preserving Mr. Khomeini is preserving him, and everything they have is from him.' (Shargh, January 22, 2016) Javadi Amoli and Rasti Kashani also welcomed Hassan Khomeini's presence in the Assembly of Experts elections. Ultimately, the Guardian Council disqualified him not based on clerical supremacy or jurisprudential supremacy (many members of the Assembly of Experts, such as Hassan Rouhani, are not known for their jurisprudence) but based on maintaining the cohesion of the existing security-military caste. Hassan Khomeini is an individual who is outside the existing security-military circle and could have been considered as a candidate for leadership after Khamenei's death. When we turn to the privileges and hidden and open transactions and the role of members of this institution in the country's economic activities, another aspect of this institution is revealed. The Assembly of Experts is a handpicked and powerful group in commercial monopolies and imports and exports and obtaining government privileges and rents, whose members are relatively stable, and mostly death causes individuals to exit this assembly (15 members in the fourth Assembly). The cases of some members of the Guardian Council, such as Mohammad Yazdi, Imam Kashi, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Abbas Vaez Tabasi, and Abolqasem Khazali, were raised in the Palizdar case. These clerics each have special privileges and monopolies in one of the areas of economic activities. Ali Aroomian, a member of this assembly, along with a few others, has been accused by the judiciary of fraud, illegal detention of individuals, usurpation of titles and government positions, and illegal sale of government property. Hashemi Shahroudi has a 15 billion Toman corruption case related to the Red Crescent. Mesbah Yazdi is referred to as one of the sugar kings in the country. Zain al-Abidin Ghorbani, a member of the Assembly of Experts from Gilan Province, has been accused by the prosecutors of involvement in corruption in the Rasht City Council case. On the eve of the fifth Assembly of Experts elections, Rafsanjani's office was accused of failing to repay a 5.2 billion Toman loan from eight years ago to the present. The children, sons-in-law, and even the guards and drivers of this small group have participated in various abuses of power and corruption, and some of them have been accused by official and unofficial sources. The son of Haeri Shirazi has been accused of land grabbing and 15 billion Toman embezzlement of public property. According to the judiciary investigator, when Hosseini, Aroomian's chief of staff, was hospitalized, despite having four wives, he requested marriage from his nurse. Since the nurse rejected this request, Hosseini threatened her after being discharged from the hospital that she would be arrested on charges of espionage. The children of Hashemi Rafsanjani, Vaez Tabasi, and Khazali have also been repeatedly accused. However, none of them and their family members and close associates (except for Mehdi Hashemi, the son of Akbar Hashemi after his political distancing from Khamenei and the protests following the 2009 elections) have been convicted in any court. The election expenses of none of the Assembly members are transparent, and there is no law for declaring the amount and source of these resources. Also, the minutes of the Assembly of Experts and its commissions are not made available to the public, while the members of this assembly gather using public resources. The function of the clerics of the Guardian Council in the Assembly of Experts is that the six clerical members of the Guardian Council, five of whom are also members of the Assembly of Experts, actually act as guardians of the assembly's structure. They disqualify anyone they feel could potentially harm this structure so that they cannot participate in the Assembly of Experts. The Assembly of Experts represents only one of the many existing tendencies among Shia clerics regarding governance (appointed, unaccountable, and non-supervisory clerical leadership). Clerics who hold such a view of clerical leadership have become agents of this system and divide its resources (the share of the religious bureaucracy) among themselves and their close associates. No group of clerics, except for Khamenei, possesses the wealth and power of this gathering in numbers less than one hundred.