PHOTO: Head of judiciary Sadegh Larijani


Iran’s head of judiciary has challenged President Rouhani’s objections to the screening of candidates for February’s elections for Parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body which chooses the Supreme Leader.

On Monday, Rouhani again called for the curbing of the power of the Guardian Council, a body appointed by the Leader, to disqualify any candidate: “The Constitution views the Guardian Council as an observer. We also recognize it as an observer.”

See Iran Daily, Dec 8: Rouhani Draws His Lines for Elections

Judiciary head Sadegh Larijani replied on Tuesday that “some are trying to pressure the Guardian Council to accept their candidates” for the 2016 parliamentary elections by submitting “such a [large] amount of candidates” that the Guardian Council cannot vet them all. Larijani — the brother of Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani — said the strategy was “incorrect”.

Iran’s hardliners and conservatives fear that Rouhani and allies such as former President Hashemi Rafsanjani will establish a “moderate” bloc of candidates, possibly allied to reformists who have been suppressed by political and legal measures for more than a decade.

The anti-Rouhani movement has called for more effective organization of hardline and conservative groups, but so far no bloc has been announced. MP Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghaddam, a spokesman for the conservative Combatant Clergy Association Spokesman said that meetings among leading clerics had ended without “any specific result“.

Ayatollah Movahedi Kermani, a Tehran Friday Prayer leader and participant in the talks, criticized Mesbahi Moghaddam for commenting through “a news site that tries to create divisions among the Principlists”. He said, “The unity process for the Principlists is hopeful and our friends must not have divisive interviews.”

Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guards have cracked down on journalists, activists, and businessmen, carrying out detentions on the pretext of a “sedition” threatening the Islamic Republic.

Rouhani has challenged the arrests through criticism of hardline media for creating the atmosphere for repression.

Another newspaper editor was charged on Tuesday. The judiciary accused Mahmoud Doaei, the managing editor of Ettalaat, one of Iran’s oldest dailies, of violating a prohibition on coverage of former President Mohammad Khatami.

Doaei is being prosecuted even though he was a member of the inner circle around Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Iranian judiciary decreed a news media blackout in February on photographs or quotations of Khatami because of his support for opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Zahra Rahnavard, who have all been held under strict house arrest since February 2011.

In the indictment, Doaei was accused of authorizing the publication of a photograph of Khatami on Saturday and quoting remarks that the former President made in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper as-Safir.