Senior Iranian cleric’s state of health sharply deteriorates

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 19 – One of Iran’s most senior clerics has been taken to intensive care after the state of his health sharply deteriorated, it was announced on Thursday.
Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 19 – One of Iran’s most senior clerics has been taken to intensive care after the state of his health sharply deteriorated, it was announced on Thursday.

Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, is currently connected to an intensive care unit (ICU) artificial breathing apparatus.

He is suffering from a blood disease that has badly damaged his body’s self-defence mechanism, according to the state-run news agency ISNA.

The news agency Fars, operated by the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported that Meshkini had gone into shock on several occasions on Thursday. He is currently undergoing treatment at a Tehran hospital.

In February, Meshkini was re-appointed as head of the Assembly of Experts, a key constitutional supervisory body, amid speculation that he would forego the position to Iran’s former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Meshkini is also the Friday prayers leader in the holy city of Qom.

Rafsanjani along with another hard-line cleric Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi were appointed as the constitutional body’s vice-chairmen.

The 86-member Assembly of Experts is an exclusively clerical body entrusted with the task of selecting the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution.