The passing of Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani has not only created a vacuum in the powerful institutions he oversaw, but also leaves the traditional conservatives within the Islamic Republic without a prominent head and at the mercy of more extreme leaders.

Mahdavi Kani was the most senior and respected leader within the traditional conservatives. He chaired the Assembly of Experts, the body that supervises and elects the supreme leader, headed the Combatant Clergy Association and founded Imam Sadegh University, which many officials within the Islamic Republic attended.

While Iran has fluid political groups and associations rather than official political parties, Iranian conservatives, or Principlists as they are called, fall into two major groupings: traditional conservatives and hard-liners.

In an editorial in Ebtekar headlined, “The fate of the Principlists after the passing of Ayatollah [Mahdavi Kani],” Mostafa Danandeh wrote that before the emergence of “extreme conservatives” (hard-liners) such as former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Endurance Front, led by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, “traditional conservatives” took Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani’s statements “as the final word.”