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Political structure Majlis-e-Shuray-e Islami (National Assembly) of 290 members. All candidates for the Majlis must be approved by an Islamic screening committee. All Majlis legislation must be approved by the 12-member Guardian Council, six of whom are appointed by the Rahbar and six by the Majlis. The Expediency Council mediates between the Majlis and the Guardian Council. Elections are held on a multi-member constituency basis, with voters casting as many votes as there are Majlis seats allotted to their constituency. Although mainly responsible for ratifying legislation, the Majlis can also propose bills and enjoys considerable political independence, largely because it cannot be dissolved by the executive. However, the limits of its influence became apparent under the sixth Majlis (2000-04), as radical legislation proposed and passed by the Majlis was rejected by the Guardian Council, or even vetoed by the supreme leader. Conservatives attacked the deputies, convicting several for “defamatory” speeches made in the Majlis, despite constitutional guarantees that deputies would not be prosecuted for speeches made in parliament. Speaker of the Majlis:
Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran's ultra-conservative mayor, won a run-off vote in elections in June 2005, defeating his rival, the former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to become Iran's first non-cleric president for 24 years. Born near Tehran in 1956, Ahmadinejad is a former provincial governor and Revolutionary Guards officer. He was actively involved in the Islamic revolution and was a founding member of the student union that took over the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. But he denies being one of the hostage-takers. His
predecessor, the reformist Mohammad Khatami, was often frustrated in his
attempts to deliver political and social changes. Hard-line conservatives
repeatedly blocked legislation during his eight years in office and the
disqualification of moderates from parliamentary elections left him
politically isolated.
Iran's political groups are better described as factions, mostly based on personalities rather than programs, though often they control a newspaper or broadcast network. While these are most often defined broadly as "reformist" or "conservative", the system is fluid and a range of political allegiances exist based on patronage, specific interests and the exchange of favors. The government is obliged to lobby strongly to move legislation through the Majlis and policies are frequently subject to complication or even reversal in the face of political manipulation or popular opposition. The Majlis is broadly divided between the majority conservative coalition Usulgerayan (Fundamentalists), and the pro-reform opposition coalition called the Eslah-Talaban (Reformists): The Hard-liner and traditional conservative groups are referred to as Fundamentalists or Principle-ists- for their loyalty to the principles of the Islamic Revolution. There are two parallel coalitions in this group which have recently begun clashing over the direction of the nation. The United Principles Front (UPF) is the main pro-government group of conservative and hard-line politicians and has three main factions. The "Society of the Selfless Devotees of the Islamic Revolution" largely comprises former members of the Islamic Revolution Guards. The Abadgaran-e Iran-e Islami (the Followers of the Imam) holds a majority within the present Majlis and "The Pleasant Scent of Servitude" faction has the closest links to the president. The Broad Principles Front (BPF) initially supported President Ahmadinejad in 2005, but have distanced themselves from him because of his style of management and some policy issues. The BPF has coalesced around the leadership of former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, and Muhammad Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran. The Left wing and reformist groups are composed of two main blocs: The Popular Coalition for Reform (PCR) and the Jebhe-ye Dovom-Khordad (23 May Front - in reference to the day former President Mohammad Khatami was elected in 1997). The PCR, a moderate pro-reform group, has been allowed to field candidates for about 55 per cent of the seats. The party is led by the former Majlis Speaker Mahdi Karrubi. The pro-Khatami Khordad bloc seeks political liberalization through political reforms at home, and a policy of detente abroad. Up to 80% of the candidates from this bloc are reported to have been disqualified in the most recent election.
The surreal world of Iranian politics MAKING sense of Iranian politics is no simple matter. Indeed, even making sense of the power structure is far from easy. The institutions have names that may seem ingenuously descriptive (such as the Expediency Council, which resolves disputes between the Majlis and the Council of Guardians) or positively Orwellian: don't expect the 86 members of the Assembly of Experts, who choose the supreme leader, to know anything about law, art, physics, medicine or in fact anything except religion. Put that down, if you will, to the exuberance of Iranian political discourse and nomenclature—any country that has a Society of Combatant Clerics and celebrates Global Arrogance Day can't be all bad—but you may still be no closer to knowing where real power lies.
Iran has two competing governments. On one side stand the elected representatives; on the other are the unlected religious and other appointed officials led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's “supreme leader”. The chart above may help, but less easy to depict, however, is the spectrum of political opinion. Never mind the Iraq-based Mujahidin-e Khalq, the armed opposition. Even within the ruling coalition, according to Atieh Bahar, a Tehran consultancy, the factions include the conservative right, reformists, moderates, old leftists, new leftists and some liberal critics. Another analyst of the Iranian scene, the International Crisis Group, in a recent study broke the factions down into conservatives and reformers (which include members of the modernist right, the Islamic left and technocrats), plus intellectual and Islamic dissenters, some of them nationalists, some students. In 1999, 2000 and 2001 the reformists won elections with big margins. But their attempts to make Iran more democratic were repeatedly thwarted by the conservatives, leading to governmental paralysis and social unrest. By March 2003 the reformers were losing ground and the conservatives went on to win a rigged general elections in 2004 and 2008. And no report can do justice to the relationships—blood as well as political—between many prominent Iranians, still less to the personal animosities that excite them. To confuse matters further, many people fit naturally into one faction on one issue but a different one on another. Thus Ali Akbar Mohtashemipour may be considered a reformist on domestic affairs but a hardliner on the Palestinian question; and ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now serves as head of the Expediency Council, has been variously cast as ideologue, pragmatist and reformer—as well as has-been and possible future leader after a conservative coup.
President
Council of
Ministers
Parliament The parliament introduces and passes laws that are ultimately subject to approval from the Council of Guardians. The Expediency Council mediates between the Council of Guardians and the parliament when they disagree on an issue. The legislative body has the power to summon and impeach Cabinet-level ministers, including the president. It is also responsible for approving the country's budget and ratifying international treaties. The parliament is often a key venue for confrontation between reformer politicians and their conservative counterparts.
Assembly of Experts The Assembly of Experts appoints the supreme leader and reconfirms him periodically. The group is responsible for monitoring his performance and removing him if necessary.
The Supreme Leader is responsible for supervising the "general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and directs all the country's foreign and domestic policy. The Supreme Leader also controls the military and Iran's intelligence operations. He alone has the power to declare war. He also appoints leaders of the judiciary, the state media, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and six of the 12 members of the Council of Guardians, a powerful oversight committee. The Supreme Leader is represented throughout the government through representatives that serve as field liaisons. These representatives have the authority to intervene in any matter on the supreme leader's behalf. Only two men have held the position of Iran's Supreme Leader: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian Revolution.
Council of
Guardians The council has wide influence. The group vets all bills the legislature passes, to ensure they adhere to the constitution and Islamic principles. If the council rejects a bill, the lawmakers must revise it. At times the council has struck down up to 40 percent of laws parliament has passed. The council also approves all candidates for parliament, the presidency and the Assembly of Experts.
Armed Forces and National Security The president heads the Supreme National Security Council, which includes the speaker of parliament, head of judiciary, chief of the combined general staff of the armed forces, key cabinet ministers and commanders of the regular military and Revolutionary Guard. The president guides the council in executing the supreme leader's foreign policy directives.
Another
element of Iran's national security is the Ministry of Intelligence and
Security, about which little is publicly known. According to law, the
ministry is responsible "gathering, procurement, analysis, and
classification of necessary information inside and outside the country."
A law also specifies that the head of the ministry be a cleric. The judiciary nominates the six lay members of the Guardian Council who are usually lawyers. Public courts deal with civil and criminal offenses. Separate "revolutionary" courts try other categories of offenses such as crimes against national security or offenses that threaten the Islamic republic. A Special Clerical Court, which is accountable to the supreme leader and -- outside of the judicial structure -- crimes allegedly committed by clerics and occasionally lay people. Decisions from the revolutionary courts or the clerical court are final and cannot be appealed.
Expediency Council Its members include heads of the three government branches, the clerical members of the Guardian Council and various other members appointed by the supreme leader for three-year terms. Cabinet members and parliamentary leaders also serve as temporary members when issues under their jurisdictions are under review. Some, such as Amir Mohebbiyan, a conservative columnist for Resalat, say there is no crisis of legitimacy. The Supreme Leader is in fact chosen by the people, in the shape of the popularly elected Assembly of Experts, just as the American president is chosen by the popularly elected Electoral College. But this argument overlooks the fact that all the candidates for the Qom-based Assembly of Experts must be clerics, and moreover clerics approved by the Council of Guardians. This, the control of candidates, is one of the three ways in which the conservatives maintain their wider grip. The second is their control of the judiciary (get rid of half a dozen judges, sighs one foreign diplomat, and most of Iran's civil-rights problems would be gone). The third is control of the armed forces, notably the Revolutionary Guards and the basij. Last November's student protests faltered only after a rally by some 10,000 basijis outside the former American embassy in Tehran. Although the students had by then decided to suspend their demonstrations, this show of strength lent visible credence to Ayatollah Khamenei's earlier threat to unleash the “force of the people”. These forms of control—plus powers of appointment over, for instance, the head of state radio and television—are greater even than those granted to the shah in Iran's 1906 constitution. But they are even more necessary to Ayatollah Khamenei's hold on power than they were to his predecessor's. Khomeini, after all, was a theologian of repute, indeed an Object of Emulation, the highest rank for a Shia cleric. He was also undoubtedly popular: 10m people flocked to his funeral in 1989. But when Khamenei took over, he had only just been made an ayatollah—to improve his credentials—and Khomeini had had to have the constitution changed to allow the supreme leadership to be held by anyone other than an Object of Emulation. Several clerics still outrank Khamenei in the Shia hierarchy, and many more are troubled by the promotion of someone of only fairly senior standing to the top theocratic job. |
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