Ahmad Jannati … the real face of the Iranian regime

Members of Assembly of Experts for the leadership in Iran elected yesterday, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati , the new president of the Council at its fifth session for a period of eight years to come. He received (ninety – year – old ,) who also heads the Guardian Council of the constitution – on 51 votes from the votes of members of the Assembly of Experts for the leadership totaling 88 members, while each of the Ibrahim Amini and Mahmudhashimi Shahroudi got 21 and 13 votes respectively. And on the election of Ahmad Jannati , the conservatives , hardliners , kept their control on the Assembly of Experts for the leadership. The current Council of Experts for the leadership is of great importance after the request of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the tenth of March / last March from the Council of the Iranian leadership experts to choose the “revolutionary” leader “” to succeed him .
Assembly of Experts for the leadership is one of the important councils in Iran, as it is undetake the task of monitoring the work and assess the performance of the guide(Al-Murshed), as well as the possibility of dismissal and the appointment of another Murshed in his place if necessary .Al-Murshed in Iran enjoys wide powers and is considered as the final say in all state matters including foreign policy, and he is the supreme commander of the armed forces, as it specializes to appoint heads of the judiciary body and the public television and radio body and the major economic groups .
. In this context, we wonder who is Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Assembly of Experts for the leadership in Iran, and what are the implications to be the chairman of the Assembly of the experts for the leadership on the inside Iran and abroad ?
The election, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Assembly of Experts, who has a strong influence in the leadership of the political process in Iran, in furtherance of the conservative approach despite the decline in their representatives in the recent parliamentary elections. And Ayatollah Jannati is one of the scholars(fakih) of a scientific and religious seminary (hawza) in Qom who embrace the principle of velayat-e faqih, and engaged in political work as well as their religious responsibilities .And Jannati was one of the few symbols of the hard-liners in Iran who was re-elected in parliamentary elections in the last February . And Jannati undertakes also the secretariat of the Guardian Council of the constitution in Iran, who is overseeing the process on the selection of candidates for the Assembly of experts, as well as the adoption of the applicants for candidacy in the presidential and parliamentary elections. And he is one of the oldest members of jurists in the Guardian Council, which consists of 12 members, as appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini , the late leader of the Islamic Revolution , a member of it in 1980.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, was born in 1927 in Isfahan, Iran’s religious family. Received his primary education in the city of Isfahan, and continued his education in Qom, the school of faidhai, at the hands of a number of well-known professors, his study included English language and Arabic literature . he practiced teaching at the Haqqani school in Zanjan for 14 years and has held after the Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic, many of the functions and responsibilities with judicial , advocacy and political nature. he is one of the militant Islamic groups and close to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , as he is a defender of the velayat-e faqih-based on assignment and opposes the requirement of the reformers to determine the powers of the Fiqih. He offered great support to the former Iranian President Ahmadinejad, especially in his first term and during the presidential election crisis in 2009, and has taken a hard stance towards the opposition leaders (Mousavi and Karroubi).
He was classified within the opposition for rapprochement with the United States, and critics of Hashemi Rafsanjani, though his son Minister Ali Jannati is one of the supporters to the current of Rafsanjani..
His opponents accused him that he employed the powers granted to him by the Guardian Council to exclude political opponents and refused to endorse their candidacy in the elections .
Ahmad Jannati participated before the revolution in a lot of events anti-Shah, and through his membership in the teachers of the scientific Hawza in Qom , he organized many demonstrations against the Shah , and was arrested in Qom and deportation to other cities more than once.
He served as judge of the court of the coup set up by Khomeini , which ruled to the execution of many of the offenders, including the son of Jannati himself, who was accused of belonging to the MKO, and he and his wife Fatima Soroor were killed in armed confrontations with revolutionary guards and participated to build the Iranian judicial system after the revolution, he was a member of the Guardian Council , since the first day, and he headed the Islamic communications Corporation, and was the imam of Friday in Qom, Kermanshah and Tehran. He took the management of the Secretariat of the Council of Guardians of the constitution , and the management of the Islamic revolutionary courts, and was a member of the Expediency Council, and a member of the authority to review the Constitution, and member of the higher Shura Council of cultural revolution . chaired committees of the Guardian Council , composed of 12 members charged with overseeing the elections, he was entrusted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to consider appeals from the opposition in the presidential elections in 2009 , which raised a lot of unrest in Iran. Ahmad Jannati called for the execution of the reformist leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi after the 2009 elections, and urged Iraqis to carry out suicide attacks on US troops after the invasion in 2003.
At the domestic level, the election of Ahmad Jannati for the presidency of the leadership of the Assembly of Experts was represented a surprise among political and popular circles in Iran yesterday , after launching a campaign by the camp of the head of the Expediency Council Hashemi Rafsanjani to remove him from the Assembly of Experts, during the elections held in the last February 26 , and formed a defeat for the moderate and reformist parties, which launched a campaign against him, especially as the two Vice-Presidents who have been elected Tuesday, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani and Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi Mhafezan are known conservatives . For its part, the news agency «Faris» considered Ahmad Jannati win «a thorn in the eyes of those who wanted to remove him from the Council», which is a clear reference to the current of Hashemi Rfsnjami. Although the Iranians sought to support the rise of moderates, but the hard-liners who hold the most important institutions will not allow only a small margin of reforms that do not affect the fundamentals of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution and its slogans .
On the external level , the election of Ahmed to head the assembly of experts for the leadership sends an important message to the Western United States and Western countries, who bet on the existence of a real change in Iran’s foreign policy, that moderation is just a sign to mislead some Western countries, especially the United States, and that Iran is controlled by hard-liners . The election of Ahmad Jannati confirms that the Iranian regime is still in the grip of conservatives, and openness to Western countries is a circumstantial opening , and is aimed primarily at paving the way for the lifting of international sanctions on it, which is what happened after the signing of the nuclear deal. Ahmad Jannati, does not hide his hostility to the agreement and opposition to any rapprochement with the United States, which is the same speech reiterated by the current leader (Al-Murshed) and will be the first measure to choose the next leader(Murshed). At the level of the Iranian regime’s relations with the Arab Gulf states , it is expected that Ahmad Jannati is working to deepen the differences between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in general, who is known by his hostility to Riyadh and attacking its role in Yemen in Friday sermons that were delivered in the capital, Tehran. It is assumed from the viewpoint of Ahmad Jannati that Saudi Arabia should leave Yemen to the Iranian influence and that’s what did not happen. In short Ahmad Jannati in this new representation in the most important institutions of the Iranian regime represents a true face of it .

Rawabet Research and Strategic Studies Center