Upcoming votes in spring 2024 in Iran pose a dilemma for Ali Khamenei: should he disqualify candidates aggressively and continue alienating the public? Or, risk a Majlis dominated by his political rivals?
In addition, there are two questions. The first one is whether reformists will participate in the process or boycott it. The number of reformist politicians who preregistered remains unclear. Pro-IRGC media claimed that the number was massive.
The second question is whether ex-president Hassan Rouhani and former Majlis speaker Ali Larijani will be active in the current cycle. Although neither is running for a Majlis seat of his own, many observers believe Larijani works behind the scenes to create a parliamentary lobby who can serve as a power base for him ahead of the 2025 presidential election. There are rumors that Rouhani is working on his own Majlis bloc and may consider running for a seat in the Experts Assembly – a body with very little influence over their daily lives aside from one critical process—choosing a new Supreme Leader.
The 290-member parliament is one of the Islamic Republic’s three main branches of government. For a long time it has held only minor importance in setting the regime’s policies, especially regarding nuclear issues and foreign relations.
Majlis’s role has declined in recent years, and much of the public has become apathetic to its makeup and deliberations. According to a July 25 government poll, 68% of Iranians are dissatisfied with parliament, and the majority could not name its current speaker.
Former parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani made it clear in an interview with centrist website Entekhab that he is not going to run for parliament (Majles) in March. However, he said that he would explain his reasons for skipping the election at a later date.
Amid he is not going to run himself, he will present a list of likeminded candidates including Ali Motahari, his brother-in-law, outspoken moderate conservative former lawmaker, who at times has even criticized Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s policies.
Larijani who still harbors hard feelings about his disqualification in the 2021 Presidential election, criticized the current ultraconservative-dominated parliament and teasingly called its hardliner members “wheeling-dealing revolutionaries.”
He accused them of playing a role of revolutionists with the only reason as winning all the positions in the government. Larijani claims that this group’s presence in the Iranian politics dates back to the early days after the 1979 Islamic revolution, ‘They have always tried to create a bipolar situation and attempted to kick their political rivals out of the scene’.
Larijani backs his idea of political purification by thinking this is the policy hardliners are advancing in order to ensure that others are excluded political competition and participation.
He said that it will be little the revolution and will inevitably lead to the disintegration and fragmentation of the nation.
However, Larijani charged that hardliners are furthering the idea of political purification to secure their own personal and factional interests. He claims that they do not believe that power positions are designed for the individuals having right talent and professional skills.
The former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also going to present a list of candidates for the Majles elections. However, although Ahmadinejad and his aides will actively take part in presenting the list, their main objective is to secure a foothold for the 2025 Presidential election, when Ahmadinejad is hoping to have a political comeback.
Ahmadinejad’s team may independently present a list of candidates for all the constituencies although they might decide at one point to come up with a shared list of candidates with one of the major conservative camps.
Like Larijani, Ahmadinejad has also tasted the bitter disqualification by Khamenei’s Guardian Council in previous presidential elections. If they are ever allowed to run again, that would mean that Khamenei is desperate to have a high-turnout election.
Conservative heavyweight Mohammad Reza Bahonar, who has repeatedly spoken with the media and warned about a low turnout, has lashed out at current lawmakers for their inefficiency, which he said has disappointed Iranian voters.
Bahonar, who like Larijani and Ahmadinejad, is a member of the expediency Council, said that Khamenei usually issued an occasional warning about previous parliaments’ performance, but he has warned the current parliament several times about various legislative matters.
According to Bahonar he has told Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf that one of the main weaknesses of the current Majles is that it does not have a powerful minority faction. The lawmakers think they have no rivals and challenges ahead of them, so that they can do whatever they like.
Thus, Khamenei could make the upcoming elections more inclusive in the hope of regaining some popular support and promoting national reconciliation after months of unrest in Iran. This approach might also help him reconcile with the various prominent figures he alienated over the past decade while neutralizing potential opposition bases.
Instead of starting registration two months before Election Day and having one vetting process handled exclusively by the Guardian Council, registration for the Majlis vote began on August 7 that is almost seven months in advance. The new process included a one-week “preregistration” period during which candidates provided information and documents for initial vetting by regime security organs. It leaves the Guardian Council with fewer registrants to vet and disqualify in October, which may attract less public criticism. According to the regime officials, more than 48,000 candidates preregistered for the Majlis elections.However, the Supreme Leader may fear that high turnout in an inclusive election process might produce a Majlis dominated by pragmatists and reformists, who could prove to be more skeptical of the regime’s current hardline approach and more willing to challenge Raisi’s government. So, if Khamenei aims to prioritize longer-term succession maneuvers, he may be even less inclined to help his rivals notch political achievements in parliament or the Experts Assembly.
