Tehran – 90-Year-Old Anti-Western Hardliner Elected As Head Of Iran’s Top Clerical Body

    5

    Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (R), a candidate for the upcoming vote on the Assembly of Experts, and Iran's former chief negotiator Saeed Jalili attend a conservatives election campaign gathering in Tehran February 24, 2016.  REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi/TIMATehran – A hard-line Iranian cleric who has been in the country’s power structure since its 1979 Islamic Revolution was chosen on Tuesday to lead the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that picks the country’s next supreme leader.

    Join our WhatsApp group

    Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email


    The selection of 89-year-old Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, an ultraconservative who called for the execution of opposition activists after Iran’s disputed 2009 election and asked Iraqis to be suicide bombers against U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003, signals the power hard-liners still wield in Iran despite a recent nuclear deal with world powers.

    In Tuesday’s vote, Jannati received the backing of 55 members of the 88-seat Assembly and beat two other candidates for the post of speaker, moderate Ebrahim Amini and conservative Mahmoud Hashemi Sharoudi. He will serve as the body’s speaker for two years.

    Influential moderate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who has helmed the Assembly in the past, did not offer himself as a candidate in the voting. Moderate President Hassan Rouhani, whose administration secured the nuclear deal last year, also is a member of the Assembly.

    After the vote, Jannati reiterated recent comments by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the Assembly should remain “revolutionary,” state TV reported.

    “I hope to work in a way that leads to happiness of the almighty God, the supreme leader and the people,” Jannati said.

    Clerics in the 88-seat Assembly serve eight-year terms in the body after being elected by popular vote. Incoming clerics were elected in a February poll that saw moderate candidates and their allies make gains in the country’s parliament.

    However, conservatives hold sway over the Assembly, which supervises the country’s supreme leader, who has final say on state matters. The body’s real power emerges after the supreme leader is gone, working as an Iranian version of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals when they gather to pick a new pope.

    The Assembly has done that only once since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 1989, it picked Khamenei to succeed his late mentor, the Islamic Revolution patriarch Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

    Jannati has been in the power structure of Iran for decades. Jannati already serves as secretary of Iran’s powerful constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, which is in charge of vetting candidates for the Assembly of Experts, as well as those running in parliamentary and presidential elections.

    Tehran-based political analyst Saeed Leilaz said he believed Jannati’s election showed Khamenei’s influence on the panel, as well as Jannati’s own in being able to vet and pick candidates from his post on the Guardian Council.

    “Jannati is symbol of continuation” of hard-line policies, Leilaz said.

    Jannati’s biography shows that as well. He traveled the world in 1989 to seek Muslim nations’ support for the death fatwa, or edict, issued by clerics against author Salman Rushdie for his book “The Satanic Verses.”

    He accused Qatar in 2002 of “committing treason against all Muslims” by hosting a U.S. air base, and urged Iraqis in 2003 to “resort to martyrdom operations to expel the United States.” In 2009, he remarked during Friday prayers that he wanted someone to shoot then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

    Jannati is widely believed to have been a major backer of Iran’s former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After Iran’s disputed 2009 vote that saw Ahmadinejad re-elected, Jannati warned security forces that any soft treatment of detained activists would be considered treason.

    “Nobody gives a flower to his murderer,” he said at the time.


    Listen to the VINnews podcast on:

    iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podbean | Amazon

    Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates


    Connect with VINnews

    Join our WhatsApp group


    5 Comments
    Most Voted
    Newest Oldest
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    7 years ago

    Islam is a peaceful religion. Please do not criticize the cleric he is only trying to follow Islam.

    7 years ago

    Our mistake with Iran was that we let the “moderate peaceful protesters” overthrow the Shah in 79. Our genuis of a president Jimmy Carter allowed this to happen. But we have never learned from our mistakes and continued down this path in Iraq Egypt Lybia & Syria. We should stop this silly notion that democracy in the middle east is good. Becuase all democracy does is that allows for Islamic extremism. The Islamists in the middle east take control of every peaceful protest. So now we are left with one choice. Which leader will be the best for both the USA and his people. Usually its a dictator like Assad verse isis. Its time we rethink our mid-east strategy.

    Logical_Abe
    Logical_Abe
    7 years ago

    If Shimon Peres can be president until 2 year ago – at the age of 90, why can’t he?

    kenyaninwhitehouse
    kenyaninwhitehouse
    7 years ago

    Obama is enabling all this through and Kerry’s son-in-law a multi millionaire IRANIAN.

    scy4851
    scy4851
    7 years ago

    ahn alter knaker un ah nun…