The Guardian:

Three possible candidates touted to become Iran’s next supreme leader:

Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani: The 80-year-old moderate politician was among the founding members of the Islamic republic and later its president, from 1989 to 1997. He is well-known famous for his pragmatism and is one of Iran’s great political survivors. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, Rafsanjani became the country’s first speaker of the parliament, a job he kept for nine years. During the Iran-Iraq war, he was the then supreme leader Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini’s top representative in the supreme defence council, acting as the de facto commander-in-chief of the Iranian military. When Khomeini died in 1989, Rafsanjani played an instrumental role in the appointment of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the current supreme leader. He is currently the head of the country’s expediency council, which mediates between the parliament and the powerful Guardian Council.

Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi: The 65-year-old is a grand ayatollah with a strong following among Iran’s Shia population. He was born in Najaf, one of the Shia cities in Iran’s neighbouring country, Iraq, but immigrated to Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution when Khomeini deposed the late Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In Iran, Shahroudi became a close ally of Khomeini and rose to become the head of Iran’s judiciary, one of the country’s main three political institutions, between 1999 until 2009. In 2011, Shahroudi was reportedly appointed by Khamenei to mediate between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian parliament (Majlis), which was critical of his government’s approach to MPs. He is also a member of the Guardian Council and considered relatively to be a moderate figure. Under Shahroudi’s watch in the judiciary, human rights abuses continued in Iran including the arbitrary arrest of activists, journalists and dissidents.

Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi: The 80-year-old cleric, often referred to as Ayatollah Mesbah, is a hardline politician who famously supported the former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his initial years in office. He is considered to be one of the country’s most hardline clerics. He is famous for his critical views about Iran’s reformist movement and in particular, his opposition to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami. He is a member of Iran’s assembly of experts and is touted to be the possible candidate for the country’s next supreme leader among the conservative and fundamental front. Mesbah is particularly well-known in the Iranian city of Qom, where a lot of theological colleges and schools are based. Although Mesbah is close to fundamentalists, he is not particularly seen as a close ally of Khamenei. The two are often seen as rivals.

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