In the Nation, Babak Sarfaraz speculates about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s potential successor, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi:
Shahroudi seems like a perfect fit for the job. At 61, he is at the peak of his powers. A brilliant student of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr of Iraq (who was himself the father-in-law of Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader today of Iraq’s Mahdi Army), Shahroudi is known among his peers for his breadth of religious knowledge and superior intellect. As a political hardliner, he is a dedicated champion of the status quo who has spent the greater part of his life struggling for the establishment or consolidation of Islamic states in Iran and Iraq along the lines set down by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei some forty years ago. Moreover, as his record in the Judiciary amply indicates, Shahroudi is as ill-disposed to radical changes as he is likely to support religious modernization. In short, as a leading jurist, he has all the strengths of Khamenei and few of his weaknesses.
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There is one other, often-neglected aspect of Shahroudi’s leadership that merits consideration, namely, the Judiciary’s occasional but critical opposition to the rapaciousness of the Ahmadinejad government. Shahroudi and other top judges have issued several official statements against attempts by Ahmadinejad’s faction to turn over important state assets and resources to their cronies in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. During the recent presidential election campaign, the public prosecutor condemned the national radio and TV for giving undue airtime to Ahmadinejad. At a time when Supreme Leader Khamenei has been giving uncritical support to Ahmadinejad and his allies, these positions by the Judiciary are both significant and symbolic, highlighting as they do Shahroudi’s closer affinity with the traditionalist-activist milieu, which holds that the clerical leadership must be even-handed and nonpartisan—something Khamenei has apparently been unable to achieve.
Read the full article here.