These Are the 6 Candidates to Watch in Iran’s Elections

Since taking power in 1989, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ruled the Islamic Republic largely with a clenched fist. He oversaw violent crackdowns on protests against presidential elections many believed were rigged, escalated Iranian military operations in Iraq and Syria, and pumped arms into Palestinian resistance groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

Now Khamenei is 76 and ailing, with no undisputed successor in sight. On Friday, Iranian voters will elect the group of men who will appoint a new supreme leader if Khamenei dies before the next Assembly of Experts election in 2024.

Iran’s hard-liners are determined not to give reformists a voice in the Assembly. The Guardian Council — a separate, powerful group of clerics who determine candidates’ eligibility — has already disqualified most reformists from the race. The same goes for parliamentary candidates, who are also up for election on Friday.

Even so, reformists still see Friday as an opportunity to stack the Assembly of Experts with leaders who would support a stronger democratic political system, and want improved economic relations with the West to continue with last summer’s nuclear agreement. Members of Khamenei’s camp, on the other hand, would prefer to protect their power within the supervisory Guardian Council, and replace him with another hard-liner.

“Reformists, centrists, and pragmatic conservatives are trying to form a broad-based coalition similar to what got Hassan Rouhani elected in 2013,” Reza Marashi, director of research at the National Iranian American Council, told Foreign Policy. “The goal in doing so isn’t to make the Assembly of Experts or parliament reformist top-to-bottom, but to make them more balanced.”

Below is a look at six of the most influential candidates up for election Friday, either in the Assembly of Experts or Iran’s parliament:

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani: Nicknamed “The Shark” for his cutthroat political tactics during his two terms as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, Rafsanjani — a founding father of the Islamic Revolution — leads a faction of moderate clerics opposed to Khamenei’s closest allies on the Assembly of Experts. He’s trying to convince voters to back his bloc and oust five conservative clerics, a strategy that has garnered grassroots support with a viral social media campaign.

He is also in favor of limiting the supreme leader’s power. In December he claimed the Assembly would be open to distributing the supreme leader’s authority among a council of leaders.

Hassan Rouhani: President Rouhani, who can serve as head of state and in the Assembly of Experts at the same time, has teamed up with Rafsanjani to marginalize hard-line clerics. He’s a useful ally: A survey last September found that three in five Iranians wanted Rouhani and his supporters to win in Friday’s elections, while only one in five favored his hard-line critics. Rouhani is making the most of his popularity: On Wednesday, he sent a text message to all cellphone users in Iran telling them “the country needs your vote.”

Mohammad Yazdi: Mohammad Yazdi, the 84-year-old incumbent chair of the Assembly, is one of five leading conservatives being targeted by the moderate coalition. Last March, Yazdi ran against — and handily defeated — Rafsanjani for the Assembly’s leadership. In 2010, Yazdi called, unsuccessfully, for placing Rafsanjani under house arrest for not doing enough to condemn protests against the contested 2009 elections. 

Mohammad Reza Aref: Educated at Stanford University, Mohammad Reza Aref is the highest-profile reformist politician to make it through the Guardian Council’s vetting for his parliamentary election bid. He previously served as minister of technology and vice president in former President Mohammad Khatami’s administration — Iran’s first true reformist president — and ran as the reformist nominee for president in 2013. He eventually dropped out to secure a victory for the moderate Rouhani.

Friday’s parliamentary elections could hinge on whether Aref convinces his backers to vote for anyone who is not a hard-liner — even if they are not fellow reformists. As part of a broader effort to rebrand his movement as willing to work with the moderate government, Aref has asked the reformist bloc to ignore the mass disqualifications and vote for candidates, including conservatives, who support Rouhani

Ali Larijani: Ali Larijani, who comes from a conservative powerhouse family, was once one of Khamenei’s close confidantes. But since Rouhani’s election, he has increasingly broken away from hard-line positions. As current parliament speaker, Larijani angered his old allies by backing Rouhani’s controversial nuclear deal in July. Heading into this parliamentary election, Larijani left the legislature’s dominant conservative group to form an independent faction.

His independent campaign has the support of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who is known for his opposition to Israel and the United States and his lethal military exploits in Iraq and Syria. That endorsement could help shield Larijani from hard-liner attacks

Ali Motahari: Ali Motahari might be one of parliament’s social conservatives, but he also unexpectedly sided with Iran’s jailed reformist leaders last year when he denounced the house arrests of two leaders of the country’s Green Movement, who have demanded democratic reforms. A speech Motahari gave in their defense sparked a brawl on Parliament’s floor. This outspoken support for political prisoners has earned him some support in the reformist camp, despite his conservative stance on social issues, like his endorsement of Iran’s mandatory hijab law.

Photo credit: BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images