Iran's Worst Clerics

AYATOLLAH AHMAD JANNATI

AFP/Getty Images

Position: Chairman of the Guardian Council, the 12 member group that oversees elections and is tasked with ensuring the government complies with the principals of the Islamic state. He also holds seats on the Assembly of Experts and Expediency Discernment Council, two other top regime bodies. Jannati frequently acts as “substitute imam” for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by delivering the Friday prayers in Tehran.

Worldview: “He’s considered a real hardliner. Way, way, way on the right. He’s a real dying breed,” says Geneive Abdo, a Middle East expert at the Century Foundation who has reported extensively on Iran’s clerics. The 82-year old Jannati has used his Friday sermons to call for the destruction of Israel and the United States and encourage Iranians to support Hezbollah in Lebanon and an Islamic state in Iraq.

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Possible election role: The Guardian Council vets candidates before they can run, generally weeding out unacceptable reformists and women. As chairman of the council, the hard-line Jannati wields enormous influence over Iran’s political process. At the same time, experts say, his influence has been somewhat diminished lately.

“Jannati is old and he’s an idiot,” says Rasool Nafisi of Strayer University. “He was put in his position only because of his absolutely loyalty [to Khomenei].” Jannati has been eclipsed somewhat by Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani, his more politically shrewd and ideologically promiscuous rival within Iran’s clerical establishment, according to Nafisi. But given his revolutionary credentials, powerful office, and nearly blind devotion to Khamenei, it would be a mistake to write him off completely.

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