I know next to nothing about how the clerics in Iran update, but a variety of things I’ve read suggest that they are not in lockstep with Khamenei. But it does look like the Guardian Council will certify the election results:
Iran’s most powerful oversight council has refused to nullify the contested presidential election just one day after it announced that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million, further tarnishing a presidential election that has set off the most sustained challenge to Iran’s leadership in 30 years, Iranian state television said Tuesday.
[….]The Guardian Council — a 12-member panel of clerics entrusted with overseeing and validating elections —has until Wednesday to certify the election as valid. The spokesman’s remarks seem to make that certification even more of a certainty. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, pronounced the vote fair in a major sermon last Friday.
Update. In the comments, Woodrow writes:
The Guardian Council are not the clerics you are looking forthey speak about. Those are, among others, the ones that Rafsanjani has been, allegedly, pulling the strings of to move Khamenei out. Even if the GC certifies, Rafsanjani can legally move to have Khamenei punted via the Assembly of Experts, which would presumably end this whole tragic crapshoot.
Update update. Laura Secor provides some interesting background in the New Yorker:
When Moussavi was Prime Minister, in the nineteen-eighties, he belonged to a faction known as the Islamic Left. It shared power with a rival faction, the Islamic Right, led by Khamenei, who was then the President. When Moussavi and Khamenei clashed, as they often did, the charismatic leader of the Islamic Revolution and the supreme leader of the country, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, intervened—most frequently on Moussavi’s side.
The entire article is worth read.
Clerical council refuses to nullify electionPost + Comments (21)