Tehran: A Shiite cleric heading a powerful religious committee died on Monday, paving the way for a potentially divisive succession battle between the clique surrounding conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and more moderate political factions.
Ayatollah Ali Akbar Faiz Meshkini died at the age of 86, state media reported. He headed the Assembly of Experts, a popularly elected but tightly controlled clerical organisation that chooses and monitors Iran's supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The 86-member assembly, though popularly elected from a list of candidates vetted by another clerical committee, will conduct an internal poll to pick a leader, probably later this summer.
Moderates hope that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, will ascend to the head of the assembly and steer Iran toward more restrained domestic and international policies. He faces a likely challenge from Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a right-wing cleric who is Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor.
Rafsanjani's rise could moderate Iran's policies in the long term, though it likely would have little bearing on whether the nation changes course on its drive toward nuclear technology in the coming months, said analysts.
"There's definitely a concerted effort by more moderate clerics to combat the more extreme elements around Ahmadinejad," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank.
"But I don't think we should raise our hopes that if Rafsanjani becomes head of the assembly suddenly he's going to have a major impact on Iran's foreign policy."
Inner circle
Meshkini's death and the oncoming succession battle highlight the secretive and nature of Iran's political inner circle, dominated by clerics whose ways remain mysterious even to many Iranians.
Meshkini was considered a member of the fundamentalist clerical faction. He was close to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic regime.
One of his sons joined the outlawed Mujahideen Khalq, an Islamic group that fell out with Iran's clerical leadership, and was executed in the first years after Iran's 1979 revolution.
Rafsanjani was also a confidante of Khomeini and strong supporter of Iran's Islamic system. But he is known to favour a less confrontational approach toward the West than Ahmadinejad.
Under Rafsanjani's presidency in the 1990s, Iran loosened social restrictions on dress and private relations.
Yazdi, his rival, opposes any softening of the Islamic Republic's domestic and foreign policies and in the past has justified the use of violence to impose Islamic values.
Though the assembly rarely if ever has intervened against the actions of supreme leader, the stakes in the succession battle are high.
Khamenei, 68, is said to suffer from prostate cancer, and various factions have begun jousting behind the scenes to promote potential successors.
Rafsanjani remains in a strong position to succeed Meshkini, who had been ill for two years.
