Hardliners In Iran Planning For Elections

Reformists In Iran warn that the ultraconservative Paydari party wants to manipulate the election of a council that is tasked with selecting the next Supreme Leader.

Amid concerns about Paydari's attempts to engineer the upcoming parliamentary elections, a leading reformist party in Tehran reported on Saturday that the hardliner group also aims to extend its "purification" project to the Assembly of Experts (AoE), the constitutional body that would select Ali Khamenei’s successor.

Etemad newspaper wrote that radical conservatives have started garnering support for their own hardline conservative candidates for the next election of the Assembly of Experts which is to be held alongside the parliamentary elections in March 2024.

The purification project, referring to hardliners monopolizing government institutions, began with the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2021 and 2020, when relatively moderate candidates were barred from competing. 

Now there are suspicions that hardliners plan to repeat the same tactic in 2024, to make sure that all the members of the parliament come from the same political faction and appoint their men to the Assembly of experts.

Currently, two seminary associations, as well as moderates and Paydari are likely to compete in the AoE elections, but the influential Paydari's intervention could potentially change the number and combination of the contestants.