The Status of Rafsanjani’s “Expediency Council” Not Clear
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei today issued an edict establishing a “Supreme Board of Arbitration and Adjustment of Relations among the Three Branches of Government.” He also named Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi as the chairman of the new body. Hashemi-Shahroudi will report directly to Khamenei. [IRNA, 25 July].
Khamenei urged the leaders and senior members of the three branches of the government to resolve their disputes through the newly established body.
In 1988, the Islamic Republic established the Expediency Council under the chairmanship of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. The Council is in charge of resolving differences and conflicts between different branches of the government. It was not immediately clear if the new “Supreme Board” would replace the “Expediency Council” or would it act as a parallel body. If the former, today’s edict by the supreme leader would effectively mean that Rafsanjani has been dumped from his last important job, that of the chairmanship of the Expediency Council.
The new Supreme Board will have five members. Its chairman, Ayatollah Shahroudi, is the former head of Iran’s Judiciary and a current member of the Guardian Council. An Iraqi-Iranian, Shahroudi once served as the leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shia political party opposing Saddam. Other members of the supreme board are Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabi, Morteza Nabavi, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei and Samad Mousavi-Khoshdel.
5 comments:
Perhaps this can be seen as somewhat analogous to American presidential councils, only in the Iranian incarnation it is assembled by the Supreme Leader branch of governance.
Another bandaid on the decaying near-corpse of the Islamic Republic.
Expediency Council is supposed to fix problems between Majles and Guardian Council.
This new one will fix problems between Majles and President.
We will soon need new ones to fix problems between Majles and Expediency Council, and between Expediency Council and this new council!
Anon 4:19 PM,
The constitution of the Islamic Republic has designated the Expediency Council as the arbitration body to do what this new supreme board is supposed to. The question is why forming a new arbitration body when the country already had one set up by the constitution? If the goal was to reduce Rafsanjani's influence, why not remove him from expediency council and appoint Shahroudi as his successor, like what they did to him at the Guardian Council? Khamenei's edict raises more questions than answers.
BTW, what are American presidential councils?
Just another tool to suppress dissent and opposition to the rule of the theocracy even when the opposition comes from deep within the ruling clique.
Rafsanjani is now entirely neutered without Khamenei having to publicly order the hit and incur the public hostility it would likely engender.
Now when Khamenei's cat'spaws in the legislature get flak from the supposedly elected Ahmadinejad and his followers, this new body will be issuing the marching orders, doing the dirty work and limiting Khamenei's public exposure.
No more defiance but now the little Ayatollah can hide a bit. Maybe the Iranian people won't notice that the facade of representative government is further slipping as the regime finds ever less tolerence for more than one point of view.
This regime is rotten to the very core.The countries run by thieves, looters and cold blooded killers and believe me the justice of the Iranian people will fall on them like tons of bricks from the sky.
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