With official nod, Khomeini’s grandson registers for electoral run

Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, registered Friday for a run for the influential clerical body that monitors the country’s supreme leader and picks a successor after his death, Reuters reported.

Khomeini’s decision to run for the Assembly of Experts comes after an apparent, conditional nod of approval from current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Reuters said Thursday. The run makes the 43-year-old the first member of the Khomeini family to test his popularity at the ballot box.

Iran started registering candidates for the election on Thursday. The registration process is to last a week, while the elections for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts will be held on February 26, 2016, at the same time as Iran’s parliamentary elections.

Sources close to Khomeini told Reuters that he received Khamenei’s go-ahead in a meeting last week.

“There is no problem [with your nomination], only be careful not to damage Khomeini’s name and respect,” the source paraphrased Khamenei telling the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

According to Reuters, Khomeini is close to President Hassan Rouhani, who is perceived as a relative moderate in the hardline world of Iranian politics, and some in the supreme leader’s inner circle have warned that such an alliance could risk of a reformist union leading Iran’s political establishment.

The assembly does not involve itself in daily affairs of state, but the fact that it picks a successor to the country’s supreme leader — who has final say on all matters in Iran — makes it potentially one of the most powerful institutions in the country.

Only senior clerics holding the religious title of Ejtehad, or jurisprudence, can be candidates for the Assembly of Experts. But like all other candidates, including those running for parliament, they have to be vetted by the Guardian Council, the country’s constitutional watchdog.

The assembly’s real job kicks in after the supreme leader is gone — a sort of Iranian version of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals when they gather to pick a new pope. The assembly has done that only once since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

In 1989, it picked Khamenei to succeed the founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the late Khomeini.

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said this week that an assembly committee has already begun compiling a list of potential candidates to succeed Khamenei, breaking a taboo on speaking openly about the top leader’s successor.

The 76-year-old Khamenei underwent prostate surgery in September 2014 and there were some reports at the time that his condition was critical. A month after the surgery, Khamenei’s official website, khamenei.ir, said he went hiking near Tehran.