Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been elected head of the Assembly of Experts, the only authority in Iranian political and religious circles with the power to decide the fate of the Supreme Guide. Rafsanjani, the former moderate conservative president, defeated the candidates close to the current president, Ahmadinejad.

A big blow for Ahmadinejad. The Assembly of Experts is responsible for monitoring the activities of the Supreme guide, who is currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for nominating his successor in case of his death or inability to continue. 73-year-old Rafsanjani has never reached the grade of Ayatollah, but for the last thirty years he has been a key figure on the Iranian political scene. A committed supporter of economic liberalisation and international dialogue, he has always been in favour of toning down the application of Coranic law in the country, thereby distancing himself from Ahmadinejad.

“It is very important news”, according to Farain Sabahi, professor of contemporary Iranian history at the University of Geneva and author of a highly regarded history of Iran. “Rafsanjani is against corporal punishment and in favour of a reconciliation with the West, including the United States, even up to the point of abandoning the country’s nuclear programme. He has achieved a very important victory, not least because he defeated Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council and a very important figure, and Ayatollah Mesbah – Yazdi, Ahmadinejad’s mentor”.

The presidency of the Assembly of Experts is a key position, as the Iranian writer and journalist Bijan Zarmandili remarked, and according to him “Rafsanjani’s voctory is a sign of his ascent in this period”.

But to what extent can this victory be seen as the decline of the Ahmadinejad era? “The complexity of power in Iran means that it’s not right to see this as a definitive signal of the end of the Ahmadinejad season”, according to Zarmandili. “It is a new, particularly intense phase of the battle between the different factions and the different sides in the Islamic Republic. And there’s also another important element: Rafsanjani is about to take up one of the key posts in Iran while General Jaafari, an enemy of moderates and reformers, has taken command of the Pasdaran, the religious militia that is a key element in Iranian military, political and economic life, representing further military pressure on the political scene that first began with the arrival of Ahmadinejad”.

Power struggles. So tension is running high, as professor Sabahi explained, also because Rafsanjani’s victory is at least the second against president Ahmadinejad. “The 3 December 2006 is a significant date because on that day the Majles [the Iranian parliament] voted for the impeachment of president Ahmadinejad and established the date for elections as 15 March 2008 instead of when his mandate runs out in August 2009”. Rafsanjani, who was surprisingly defeated by Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections of three years ago, has slowly begun to make up lost ground. According to Ahmadinejad’s entourage this situation is due to the adverse press campaign against the current president, but Zarmandili does not agree. “I think this can be excluded. There are signs of a changing climate in the political and social geography of Iran, but I can’t see any hidden figure behind it. The revolt in recent months against petrol rationing occurred after a revolt by workers in the transport sector in Teheran. The Iranian capital is a city of 12-13 million people and the transport sector is a key sector where the struggle for improved wages was followed for the first time by the setting up of independent unions. And before that revolt there had been similar protests by teachers and other categories”. Discontent born out of the unrest of an impoverished country where new alliances are being formed. “The novelty is that the historical presence of opposition from the civil society made up of journalists, students and intellectuals has been joined by opposition from members of the real society made up of manual workers and office workers who up until now have kept out of the political debate. I would say”, Zarmandili concluded, “that instead of talking about a plot or a hidden figure it would be more accurate to talk about the failure of economic policies. During the last election campaign Ahmadinejad made a great deal of promises including the promise to redistribute revenues from petrol, but this hasn’t happened. People are disillusioned and are taking to the streets”.