Next head of top Iran assembly to be selected in early Sept.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17 – The next head of a key Iranian constitutional supervisory body will be selected in early September, an official announced on Thursday. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17 – The next head of a key Iranian constitutional supervisory body will be selected in early September, an official announced on Thursday.

The Assembly of Experts (AE), an 86-member exclusively clerical body entrusted with the task of selecting the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, is currently without a chairman following the death on July 30 of Ayatollah Ali Meshkini.

Ali-Akbar Qoreishi, an assembly member, told the government-run news agency Fars that the next AE chief would be selected during its session between 4 to 6 September.

In February, Meshkini, 86, had been re-appointed as head of the Assembly of Experts amid speculation that he would forego the position to Iran’s former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani along with another hard-line cleric Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, who are currently both the constitutional body’s vice-chairmen, are most likely to be appointed as Meshkini’s successor.