Rafsanjani picked to head Iran's powerful assembly

By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Clerics picked Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Tuesday to lead a powerful Iranian government body, in a boost for the former president who wants better ties with the West and a blow to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Rafsanjani's victory over a hardline rival to become speaker of the Assembly of Experts is a further step in his political recovery at the expense of Ahmadinejad, a vociferous critic of the West who beat the pragmatic, mid-ranking cleric in the 2005 presidential race, analysts said.

But the change will not herald a shift in Iran's foreign or nuclear policy nor would it have a big impact on the assembly's tendency to stay clear of day-to-day politics, analysts added.

The assembly is an 86-seat body with the power to appoint, supervise and even dismiss the Islamic Republic's highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It has, however, not exercised the power to dismiss the supreme leader and is not believed to have directly intervened in policy-making.

The clerics, many of them in their 60s or more, met to replace Speaker Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, who died in July.

"(Rafsanjani) was elected as the head of the Assembly of Experts," assembly spokesman Hossein Habibzadeh told Reuters.

Rafsanjani, president in the 1990s, has increasingly sided with pro-reform politicians opposed to Ahmadinejad. In the speaker contest, he beat Ayatollah Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, an oversight body reformists blame for blocking many of their candidates in presidential and parliamentary elections.

Rafsanjani won 41 votes to Jannati's 34, Iranian media said.

"It means to hardliners, like Jannati and Ahmadinejad, that (Rafsanjani) is not somebody they can sideline easily. He is going to play a role in the leadership of the country and they have to come to terms with that," said one political analyst.

'WE SHOULD NOT PROVOKE'

"Maybe the reformists, after the election, (will) say, 'It is a victory for us ,and it is a sign of victory in the parliament (election in March)," Amir Mohebian, a conservative commentator, said before the vote he expected Rafsanjani to win.

He said such an assessment by reformists, who seek social and political change, would overstate their position but he said the win would add luster to Rafsanjani's political comeback.

Rafsanjani scored another victory in December by topping the vote in the Tehran constituency in the December assembly election, well ahead of a cleric seen as close to Ahmadinejad.

Rafsanjani, who has had a hand in virtually every major political development in the country during and since the 1979 Islamic revolution, has become an increasingly vocal critic of Ahmadinejad's government, albeit usually in veiled terms.