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Ayatollah Ali Akbar Meshkini, chairman of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts, died on Monday, leaving the way open for his replacement by the influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The 86-year-old ayatollah, who had been suffering from lung problems, was a conservative who had led Friday prayers in the holy city of Qom. 

 Mr Rafsanjani, a pragmatist critic of Iran’s rightward drift under President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, is already vice-chairman of the assembly, a directly elected body of clerics responsible for choosing and monitoring the supreme leader, Iran’s highest office. “The assembly meets infrequently – so for the time being, Mr Rafsanjani will run it,” Mohammad Ali Abtahi, cleric and former vice-president, told the FT. “Then the assembly will choose a successor, and Mr Rafsanjani has momentum from the election.” In December last year Mr Rafsanjani topped the Tehran division of the assembly’s election with more than 1.5m votes. The Mehr news agency reported that a new chairman would be chosen at September’s scheduled meeting. Mr Abtahi said the “longer-term” effect of Mr Rafsanjani becoming chairman would be to “further weaken” the ideas of Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a fundamentalist cleric thought to influence Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. Whereas Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi has been concerned mainly with philosophy, his strong opposition to western cultural influence has chimed with Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s impassioned assertion of Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology and his scorning of the effects of western sanctions. Mr Rafsanjani, by contrast, has advocated a more measured approach in international policy. The atmosphere in Iran’s political class has been hotting up in recent weeks in the run-up to next year’s parliamentary elections. Buoyed by their relatively good showing in December’s polls for both the Assembly of Experts and local councils, reformists and conservative pragmatists have been discussing possible electoral co-ordination under a trio of Mr Rafsanjani and two leading reformists, former president Mohammad Khatami and former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karrubi.

Source: Financial Times