Is the Islamic Republic of Iran On Its Last Elected President?
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants to eliminate the elected Iranian presidency, writes Yasmin Alem. The move could resolve a two-decade-long power struggle between the two most powerful men in Iran — the Supreme Leader and the president — by giving Khamenei much more control over the executive office in a new, parliamentary system.
A trial balloon floated by Iran’s Supreme Leader last year is coming closer to reality and with it, the prospect that Iran’s political system will become even less representative of popular will.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei first raised the idea in October of abolishing the directly elected Iranian presidency by highlighting the regime’s flexibility for institutional change. At the time, his statement elicited an array of reactions from across the political spectrum. His allies in the parliament and the Guardian Council, a body that vets candidates for elected office, swiftly endorsed the proposal, assuring Iranians that well-established legal mechanisms existed for such a change. Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, speaker of the Guardian Council, told Khabaronline that the changes would not “undermine the republican and democratic values of the regime.”
In contrast, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned that eliminating the presidency would “undermine the people’s power to choose the country’s political direction.” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was uncharacteristically tight-lipped on the subject.
The Supreme Leader has taken this notion a step further. In late July, a parliamentary faction was established to assess the conditions for changing the presidential system to a parliamentary one, with the “president” selected by parliament. A newspaper affiliated with Ahmadinejad decried the change as a subterfuge for power-hungry factions that have difficulty getting popularly elected — an ironic comment in view of Ahmadinejad’s own disputed re-election in 2009. (A former Iranian diplomat told Al-Monitor on August 3 that the longtime foreign policy advisor to the Supreme Leader and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati may seek Iran’s presidency.)
