Can a former kingmaker make a comeback in Iran?

As Iran prepares for elections on 26 February for parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses Iran’s supreme leader, the name of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani crops up frequently in media and political discussions. Iran’s former president, whose political presence faded during the presidencies of Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is once again on the rise.

At 81, Rafsanjani is embroiled again in a new political battle. Over the past few years he has gained popularity among ‘moderates’, a term that has become popular since Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013 and which includes some figures previously seen as reformists and others as ‘principle-ists’. He is already one of the Assembly’s 78 members. This week he was cleared to run again.
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Saeed Abutaleb, a former principle-ist parliamentary deputy, predicts Rafsanjani is going to have a big win in the Assembly of Experts. “I think not only that Rafsanjani and his allies will be successful in the election, but it’s even possible that Rafsanjani becomes the chairman of the assembly,” he told Tehran Bureau.

The next chairman will have a “very significant” role, said Abutaleb, given the assembly may in its next eight-year term choose a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who is 76 and in 2014 underwent prostate surgery.

And things do not end there for Rafsanjani. His supporters have also geared up for the parliamentary elections, for which significant numbers of moderates leaning toward Rafsanjani have stepped forward.

The Guardian Council, which vets candidates for elections, has failed to qualify most of these candidates. But despite all the hurdles, the new ‘moderate’ faction still has the upper hand in the parliamentary elections, said Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of political science at Tehran University, given they have enough candidates qualified to win more seats than the nearly 30 they hold out of 288, which is about 10%.

The Guardian Council is reviewing the mass disqualifications and may reverse itself in some cases.

“Rafsanjani and the moderates benefitted a lot from all the developments since the establishment of the new government [in 2013], especially the nuclear deal and consequently the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” he told Tehran Bureau. “So their chances are quite high for the election.”

Any successes would leave them well short of a majority, said Abutaleb: “The next parliament is not going to be dominated by moderates and Rafsanjani’s allies, but I believe their presence would be more significant than the current parliament.”

These days Rafsanjani is far more popular with the public than during the presidencies of Khatami and Ahmadinejad, when he was under constant attack by the government. The roots of this unpopularity lay in his time as president from 1989 to 1997.

Prior to becoming president, Rafsanjani also played a key role in Khamenei’s ascent to supreme leader. In 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic and its leader, died without designating a replacement, Rafsanjani, then a powerful parliamentary speaker, argued that Khomeini had been in favor of Khamenei’s candidacy. Khamenei was elected as the new supreme leader by the Assembly of Experts in June 1989 and two months later, Rafsanjani took over as the next president.

Continue Reading: http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2016/jan/27/iran-ali-akbar-hashemi-rafsanjani-comeback-assembly-experts-election