Pro-Government Media Pitting Mahdavi Kani Against Hashemi

Pro-government media in Iran are reporting of the impending candidacy of ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani for the position of the chair of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership (Majles Khobregan). According to these reports, Mahdavi Kani is under pressure by a number of political personalities and organizations to compete with incumbent Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the upcoming elections for the top position on the powerful body that constitutionally is charged with supervising the work of the leader and appointing one if necessary. Jahan News website affiliated with Alireza Zakani a pro-government MP, has referred to increased “speculations in favor of ayatollah Mahdavi Kani taking the chair position” while at the same time warning of “wide-spread plans” to “discredit and dissuade” him fro this.

This pro-government site has identified the pressure group against Mahdavi Kani’s candidacy as “Hashemi Rafsanjani’s entourage” and states that just recently this group recruited an entire team of media and political experts to ensure that ayatollah Mahdavi Kani fails in his candidacy. According to this site, the members of this team are composed of “a number of newspapers editors, some members of the Assembly of Experts, family members of Hashemi Rafsanjani, and high ranking officials of Azad University”.

In a related story two days ago speaking about the next session of the Assembly to be held in mid-March, a member of the governing board of the Assembly seyed Ahmad Khatami stated that “electing the governing board” is on the agenda of the upcoming session and “will be discussed accordingly”.

Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani is the general secretary of Tehran’s Jame Rohaniat Mobarez (Tehran Association of Combatant Clergy) and the chancellor of Imam Sadegh University, an educational institute entrusted with the training of high ranking officials for management positions within the Islamic Republic regime. He is also considered one of the most influential clerics in the traditional right wing of the political spectrum as well as among the most trusted officials of ayatollah Khamenei. He was not a member of the Assembly of Experts in the beginning of its current session, but joined in during the mid-term elections in March 2007 when he receiving one and a half million votes from Tehran. Talk of him becoming the new chair began when he joined the body. When Kani joined the Assembly, Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected its chair to succeed ayatollah Ali Meshkini, after his death. But despite talks that Kani would rise to the leadership of the body, he has remained a mere member of the body under Rafsanjani.

Jahan News website believes things are about to change. According to the site, a member of the powerful Guardian Council and a staunch supporter of the supreme leader ayatollah Alam al-Hoda has raised the possibility of submitting a joint request for the candidacy of ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, in his “consultations with a number of Assembly members.” Jahan news claims that over 50 members of the Assembly favor Kani.

In his weekly meeting with Ansare Hezbollah militia group, national security and foreign policy committee member in the Majlis Parviz Soroori has also talked of “hearing that Kani is a candidate” in the upcoming elections. But he added that he had heard that Kani was not interested.

Another group that has advanced this idea is Etehadie Jame Eslami Daneshjooyan (The Union of Islamic Student Association) which invited Kani to announce his candidacy.

It should be noted that relations between Kani and Rafsanjani have been cordial in the past. At the height of the verbal attacks on Rafsanjani by pro-Ahmadinejad groups last year, Kani chose to support Rafsanjani. On February 4, 2009 Kani told an ILNA labor news agency reporter that those calling for Rafsanjani’s removal “were not important” and that he and his associates would continue to sit at his talks.

As differences between Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad and then later between Rafsanjani and Khamenei went public, calls began to be heard for removing Rafsanjani from his two most important posts, i.e., the leadership of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership and the State Expediency Council. It should be noted that just two days ago hardline Kayhan newspaper which dogmatically supports the leader and the president wrote that the Assembly of Experts on Leadership “did not install the supreme leader.” The editorial wrote that the supreme leader got his legitimacy from God, which was transmitted through Shiite imams. The piece concluded that all that the Assembly did was to “affirm” what was evident and clear, and what was the voice and view of the current imam. Interestingly this piece in Kayhan came just a day after ayatollah Khamenei publicly said during his Friday sermon that everything in the Islamic republic was based on the public vote! He even named the elections in the Assembly of Experts which he said “removed or installed the leader” and other bodies such as the president, the Majlis, the councils and other bodies, saying that they were all based on people’s vote. This sermon came while protestors in Egypt continued to call for their demands and for changes to a democratic regime based on honest elections.