tags: [actor_profile, intelligence, institutional] last_updated: 2026-03-21 # Assembly of Experts ## Executive Profile (BLUF) The [[Assembly of Experts]] (Majles-e Khobregan-e Rahbari) is an 88-member deliberative body of Islamic jurists constitutionally mandated to appoint, monitor, and theoretically dismiss the Supreme Leader of [[Iran]]. Following the February 2026 assassination of [[Ali Khamenei]] during the onset of the current regional war, the Assembly fulfilled its paramount systemic function by rapidly elevating his son, [[Mojtaba Khamenei]], to the supreme leadership on March 8, 2026. Historically managed as a heavily vetted, rubber-stamp institution by the [[Guardian Council]], its unprecedented wartime execution of a hereditary succession underscores its role as the ultimate legal mechanism for ensuring regime continuity and formalizing the state's transition into a highly centralized military-security autocracy. ## Grand Strategy & Strategic Objectives The Assembly's singular strategic objective is the perpetuation and defense of the *velayat-e faqih* (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) system. It seeks to maintain an unbroken, resilient line of absolute clerical-political authority to insulate the state from both internal collapse and external subjugation. In the immediate 2026 wartime environment, the Assembly aims to project impenetrable domestic and international unity behind the new Supreme Leader, delegitimize any internal theological or political opposition to the rapid succession, and provide the indispensable constitutional veneer required for the [[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]] (IRGC) to execute total-war directives under a cohesive, unquestioned command structure. ## Capabilities & Power Projection **Kinetic/Military:** The Assembly natively possesses no kinetic capabilities. However, its supreme legal authority establishes the constitutional legitimacy of the Commander-in-Chief. The rapid, pre-engineered March 2026 succession engineered by the Assembly directly enabled the [[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]] and conventional military forces to maintain continuous, undisputed operational command during a period of acute strategic vulnerability and systemic shock. **Intelligence & Cyber:** The body lacks organic intelligence gathering apparatuses. It relies entirely on the [[Ministry of Intelligence]] (MOIS) and the [[IRGC Intelligence Organization]] to secure its members, vet its proceedings, and violently suppress any domestic challenges to its decrees. **Cognitive & Information Warfare:** The Assembly wields supreme ideological and theological authority within the Islamic Republic. By legally elevating [[Mojtaba Khamenei]], the Assembly deployed a vital cognitive defense against systemic fractionalization. It utilizes state broadcasting to frame its decisions in absolute, divine terms, signaling to both domestic hardliners and the transnational [[Axis of Resistance]] that the state's ideological core remains resolute and fully functional despite severe kinetic degradation. ## Network & Geopolitical Alignment **Primary Allies/Proxies:** * [[Guardian Council]] - The symbiotic institutional partner that strictly vets all candidates for the Assembly, preemptively disqualifying any moderates or reformists to guarantee absolute ideological conformity. * [[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]] (IRGC) - The ultimate kinetic enforcer of the Assembly's decisions; the IRGC's security apparatus was the primary driver behind the expedited 2026 succession consensus. * [[Combatant Clergy Association]] - The dominant conservative political-clerical faction within the body, ensuring alignment between state policy and traditionalist jurisprudence. **Primary Adversaries:** * Domestic Reformists / Opposition - Historically sought to democratize the Assembly or subject the Supreme Leader to actual legislative oversight; these factions have been entirely purged from the institution and neutralized by the security state. * [[United States]] / [[Israel]] - Viewed by the Assembly as existential, imperialist threats dedicated to the dismantlement of the Islamic Republic's constitutional and divine order. * Traditionalist Clergy in [[Qom]] - Quietist or senior clerics who historically opposed hereditary succession or the politicization of the seminary, whose influence was forcefully bypassed during the March 2026 succession. ## Leadership & Internal Structure The Assembly comprises 88 clerics elected to eight-year terms, though the uncompromising vetting process by the [[Guardian Council]] guarantees an exclusively loyalist, ultra-conservative composition. While it meets semi-annually in peacetime, it maintains a permanent secretariat and emergency operational protocols. * **Chairman:** Ayatollah [[Mohammad-Ali Movahedi Kermani]]. An elderly, staunchly conservative figure who presided over the body during the critical March 2026 transition. He played a vital ceremonial and bureaucratic role in fast-tracking the succession protocols amidst the wartime crisis. * **Internal Dynamics:** Historically divided into subtle varying shades of conservatism, the Assembly was decisively homogenized during the deeply engineered 2024 elections, resulting in a historically low voter turnout but an ideologically impenetrable cohort. During the March 2026 succession crisis, the body operated as an instrument of state survival rather than a deliberative parliament. Bypassing the traditional seniority of the seminary hierarchy in [[Qom]], the Assembly executed a consensus fundamentally driven by the IRGC, reflecting the total subordination of traditional clerical debate to the immediate existential imperatives of the Iranian security state.