Rafsanjani victory changes power balance

In a major political development, the chairmanship of Iran's most powerful politico-clerical body has been won by a moderate conservative.

Observers believe the new chairman, former president Aliakbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, may be able to tip the factional balance in favor of the anti-radical camp.

The Assembly of Experts, or Khobregan, is primus inter pares among Iran's multitudinous state and semi-state institutions. Composed of 86 high-ranking clerics and billed as Iran's most powerful and venerated political body, it is vested with immense authority.

According to article 107 of the Constitution, it alone can choose a new Supreme Leader if and when the previous leader passes away. Article 107 stipulates that five members of the Assembly of Experts should be included in a commission created for the purpose of revising the Constitution. Article 111, states that the Khobregan can dismiss a sitting Supreme Leader for the dereliction of his duties - this last item is interpreted by most legal experts as the sole mechanism by which another entity can provide oversight on the Supreme Leader.

The public first began to understand the importance of Khobregan after the death of Ayatullah Khomeini in 1989, when the body consensually chose Ayatullah Ali Khamenei as Iran's next Supreme Leader.

However, aside from that momentous event, the assembly has rarely ventured into the realm of politics. Meeting twice annually - usually for two to three days each time - it has contended itself with lending blanket approvals to Ayatullah Khamenei's positions.

Aytaullah Meshkini - the previous Khobregan chairman who died in July - was a quintessential traditionalist cleric. Eschewing such manifestations of modernism as democracy and liberalism, he was above all a champion of stability and the status quo. As the simultaneous head of the powerful Qum Theological Ecclesiastical Association, he believed in the older methods of conducting business and politics where an elite group of elder statesmen decided all matters of importance to state and society.

In the 28 years he was the head of the Khobregan, he studiously resisted demands for change. This is not to say he was against political engagement; far from it. His modus vivendi was merely to discuss crucial political and religious issues with other top leaders behind closed doors and away from the peering eyes of the public - and lower-ranking clerics.

To an uninitiated observer, the Khobregan was all about collegiality and fraternity.

His death has changed all that.

An inauspicious moment for hard-line forces

Rafsanjani's speech to the gathered assembly which was convened hours before the crucial vote is a harbinger of things to come.

"One of the issues current among both the public and Khobregan's friends is that the assembly's potential has not been tapped sufficiently. I believe that it [the assembly] can have a much more important role to play," he said.

Meshkini's death came at a particularly inauspicious moment for hard-line forces. Iran is currently in the midst of one of its periodic spasmodic changes; except this time, the stakes seem much higher and the final outcome more unpredictable.

The last presidential election saw the solidification of an important trend that had been underway for some time: the emergence of a powerful new axis in the force constellation of the Islamic Republic.

This axis is composed of a new cadre of hard-line forces, which had been absent from top decision-making until recently and generally espouse radical and anti-establishment tendencies.

The two men symbolizing this new axis are Mahmood Ahmadinejad and Ayatullah Messbah Yazdi, who represent the lay and the clerical components, respectively.

Despite its early and easy victories - which were aided and abetted by Sup