Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Guardian Council
Summary
The Guardian Council, (also called Council of Guardians or Constitutional Council, Shourā-ye Negahbān) is an appointed and constitutionally mandated 12-member council that wields considerable power and influence in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The constitution of the Islamic Republic gives the council three mandates:
a) veto power over legislation passed by the parliament (Majles);
b) supervision of elections; and
c) approving or disqualifying candidates seeking to run in local, parliamentary, presidential, or Assembly of Experts elections.
The Iranian constitution calls for the council to be composed of six Islamic faqihs (experts in Islamic Law), "conscious of the present needs and the issues of the day" to be selected by the Supreme Leader of Iran, and six jurists, "specializing in different areas of law, to be elected by the Majlis (the Iranian Parliament) from among the Muslim jurists nominated by the Chief Justice" (who, in turn, is also appointed by the Supreme Leader).
The Council has played a central role in controlling the interpretation of Islamic values in Iranian law in the following ways:
As part of its vetting of potential candidates to determine who can and cannot run for national office, it has disqualified reform-minded candidates—including the most well-known candidates—from running for office;
Vetoes laws passed by the popularly elected Majlis.
Has increased the influence that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (an ideological fighting force separate from the Iranian army) has on the economic and cultural life of the country.
When the 2009 presidential election was announced, popular former president Mohammad Khatami would not discuss his plans to run against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for the Council might have disqualified Khatami as it had other reformists' candidatures, on the grounds that they were not dedicated enough to Islamic values.
There have also been instances where the Constitutional Council reversed its ban on particular people after being ordered to do so by Khamenei.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.