Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lit a firestorm on social media last week by refusing to wear black during the mourning period for President Ebrahim Raisi; he then got into a vicious online feud with a prominent state media reporter named Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour over the snub.
Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash on May 19, along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several other high-ranking officials. The Iranian regime declared five days of mourning for Raisi, culminating in his funeral on Thursday.
On the Tuesday after Raisi’s death, Iran convened a scheduled meeting of its Assembly of Experts in Tehran. The assembly is one of several governing councils that give the regime a vague illusion of representative government and careful deliberation but, in fact, are controlled by the theocratic supreme leader, who has total control over the State and much of Iran’s national wealth.
President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a news conference, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, in New York (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow).
The Assembly of Experts is a secretive council with 88 members who meet once a year. One of its duties is rubber-stamping the supreme leader for another eight years in power, until he either dies or retires, at which point the Assembly of Experts confirms his replacement. The Iranian theocracy has only had two supreme leaders since it came to power in a 1979 coup: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his protege, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took power after Khomeini’s death in 1989 and rules to this day at the age of 80.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to media after he voted for the parliamentary runoff elections, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, May 10, 2024 (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi).
One of the 88 current members of the Assembly of Experts is former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an erratic individual who often stirs up controversy on social media. Ahmadinejad fell out of favor with the clerics who rule Iran near the end of his presidency, which lasted from 2005 to 2013.
Pushed to the margins after losing a power struggle, he attempted to mount comebacks in 2017 and 2021 but was disqualified from running for the presidency both times, despite his habit of ostentatiously registering his candidacy with mobs of howling supporters to show the regime he remains influential.
Ahmadinejad was rumored to be considering another run for the office before Raisi’s death and has expressed interest in running in the snap election that must be held within 50 days. He would most likely be disqualified again, although some observers wonder if he might have grown strong enough as a populist firebrand to make the regime nervous about dismissing his candidacy out of hand.
