OSIPP Discussion Paper: DP-2020-E-003

The Candidate Screening in Iran’s Parliamentary Elections, 1984-2012

April 23, 2020

Tomoyo Chisaka
Ph.D. student, Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University
Research Fellow, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science【keywords】Iran’s parliamentary elections, candidate screening, the Guardian Council【summary】
This discussion paper examines historical development of the candidate screening for Iran’s parliamentaryelections from 1984 to 2012. Scholars have discussed disqualification of reformists by the Guardian Council,
but little is known about to what extent the pattern of disqualification was consistent in the elections. Using
various local newspapers, I identified who were disqualified at elections in a long period of time. The resultshows that the Guardian Council gradually expanded the target of disqualification. In some cases evenincumbents who were once allowed were later disqualified. The paper concludes that the Guardian Council
played an important role in excluding those who challenge the Supreme Leader’s authority.
Acknowledgment: This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 19J10368). I thank Professor
Akihisa Matsuno for his guidance and comments. All errors are my own.
The author's email address: t-chisaka@osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp

1. Introduction1
This paper examines the Guardian Council's practice of candidate screening for parliamentary elections in Iran.
Scholars have argued that candidates who seek political reform (reformists) tend to be disqualified by the Guardian
Council, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader. Sarabi writes, for instance, “[T]he mostcontroversial barriers are the requirement that candidates demonstrate a practical commitment to Islam and to theIslamic government and the constitutional power of the Guardian Council to supervise elections(Sarabi1994,95).”
The question is to what extent the pattern of the candidate screening was consistent. Since the existing literaturemostly deals with case studies of each parliamentary election, little is known about exactly when reformists arelikely to be disqualified. Little is known either about whether candidates received the same result of screening in
the past elections. To answer these questions, I analyzed local newspapers published during the eight parliamentaryelections from 1984 to 2012,2 such as Keyhan, Ettelaat, Jomhuri-ye Islami, Salam, Sharq, and Hayat-e now (seeTable 1 in the Appendix for a list of newspapers) that I collected at the Central Library of the University of Tehran
and the Iran’s National Library between February 2019 and February 2020. The result of the analysis revealed thatthe patter of candidate screening differs from election to election.
The paper presents two findings. First, the screening practice was not consistent. Even incumbents who wereapproved in the past could be later disqualified. As many scholars point out, reformists were the targets of theGuardian Council’s screening. But there is an overlooked fact that the degree to which reformists were screened
varies from election to election. Second, the Guardian Council gradually expanded the target of disqualificationfrom liberalists to the Islamic Left, and to reformists. It may be discerned that the Guardian Council plays asignificant role in the removal of anyone who potentially challenges the Supreme Leader.
First, the paper briefly explains the Iranian parliamentary election system. It then presents the findings aboutchanging patterns of the candidate screening over almost three decades and explains features of disqualified
candidates. The paper ends with a conclusion and suggestions for a future research.

2. The Iran’s parliamentary election: a mixture of democracy and theocracy
The Iran's parliamentary election system has both democratic and theocratic features. The democratic features
are universal suffrage and direct voting. All Iranian nationals over the age of 18 are eligible.3 290 members of theparliament are elected by direct vote from 207 electoral districts. Electoral districts are allocated seats in proportionof their population. The capital Tehran is allocated the largest number of 30 seats, followed by 6 of Tabriz, 5 ofEsfahan and Mashhad, 4 of Shiraz, 3 of Orumiyeh, Ardabil, Ahvaz, Abadan, Kermanshah, Rasht, Bandar-e Abbas ,2 of 21 cities, and 1 of other areas. 5 seats are allocated to religious minorities.4 Representatives are elected throughtwo rounds of voting for a four-year term with no term limitation. Candidates who have successfully secured onefourth of the votes in the first round are elected. If no one could get one-fourth of the votes, a second round of
voting is held (Alem 2011,14).
1

This paper adopts a simplified version of the transliteration system adopted by the Iranian Studies journal, with the exception of diacritics.
While the election-supervising authority of the Guardian Council has been constitutionalized since 1979, appointment of the members of thiscouncil was not completed in 1980. Therefore, the Guardian Council started to practice its legal authority of screening candidates for Parliamentaryelections in1984. For these reasons, this paper examines the result of candidate screening from 1984.
3
The first minimum age for voting was 16 according to the 1979 election law, however, it became 15 in 1984. In 1999, it again became 16 butchanged to 15 in 2000. In 2007, the minimum age was set 18.
4
The number of parliamentary seats was increased from 270 to 290 in 1999. The seat allocation is as of April 2020. Tabanak
https://www.tabnak.ir/fa/news/956497/ (accessed April 4, 2020)2

The seemingly democratic aspects of parliamentary election is a tool for the Supreme Leader, who himself is
not directly elected by people, to seek popular support. Tezcur pointed out, “[T]he Supreme Leader has utilized
elections as an institutional means to ensure that the regime was perceived to be based on popular consent andappeals to the people (Tezcur 2008, 55).”
The Iran’s parliamentary election system also has theocratic features. The most fundamental is the pre-election
candidate screening by the Guardian Council. The 1979 constitution stipulates:
During the absence of the Glorious Lord of the Age (the missing twelfth imam of the Shi'ite sect], may God
grant him relief, he will be represented in the Islamic Republic of Iran as religious leader and imam of thepeople by an honest, virtuous, well-informed, courageous, efficient administrator and religious jurist, enjoying
the confidence of the majority of the people as a leader. (Article 5)
The absolute ruler of the world and humanity is God and He alone has determined the social destiny ofhuman … The nation will use this God-given right to act according to the manner determined by the following
principles. (Article 56)
To achieve these constitutional goals, two constitutional levers are provided: the absolute power of the Supreme
Leader and the oversight of the Guardian Council (Boroumand and Boroumand 2000, 117).
The Guardian Council consists of six clerics and six jurists. The Supreme Leader appoints six clerics and six
jurists are chosen by the legislature from a list prepared by the head of the judiciary who is appointed by theSupreme Leader (Samii 2004, 405). The Guardian Council’s role of supervising elections is spelled out in Article
99 of the Constitution: “The Guardian Council has the responsibility of supervising elections of the Assembly of
Experts for Leadership, the President of the Republic, the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament), and the
direct recourse to popular opinion and referenda (Samii 2001, 645).”
The power to supervise electoral processes is shared between the Supreme Leader and the President, although
it is not shared equally, as shown in Figure 1 in the Appendix. The solid line indicates the screening processes
under the President while the dotted line indicates screening processes under the supervision of the Supreme Leader.
Institutions under the Supreme Leader include the Guardian Council, the Central Supervising Committee (Hey’ate Nezarat-e Markazi), and branches of the supervising committee in each electoral district. The Central Supervising
Committee is chaired by a selected member of the Guardian Council. Meanwhile, the main election-supervisionorganization under the President is the Executive Committee (Hey’at-e Ejra’i), that is composed of a Governor(Farmandar) who is appointed by the Minister of Interior and 30 locals who strongly support the regime. While
the Executive Committee under the President carries out a screening process from the registration to the final
judgment, the Supervising Committee under the Supreme Leader has extraordinary power to check the first roundresult of the Executive Committee; that is, he Central Supervising Committee can reverse decisions made by the
Executive Committee.
In sum, while the Iran's parliamentary election system shows some democratic features, theocratic features
influence electoral processes more powerfully. It is noticeable that the Guardian Council under the supervision of
the Supreme Leader has an overwhelming power to remove any candidate form the list without legal constraint.
The next section examines to what extent this legal authority of screening candidates was exercised by the
Guardian Council.

3. Historical development of the candidate screening for parliamentary elections
Excluding Liberalists in the second and third parliamentary elections (1984 -1988)
In 1984, the Guardian Council for the first time screened candidates of a parliamentary election. The theocratic
screening committee disqualified a number of incumbent candidates including Mehdi Bazargan, head of the IranFreedom Movement (IFM), and his followers who were regarded as liberalists. Bazargan had been appointed toPrime Minister of the provisional government by Khomeini in February 1979, but he resigned in November 7,
1979, because of discord with Khomeini over domestic and foreign policies including how to deal with the hostagecrisis at the American Embassy in Tehran (November 4, 1979-January 20, 1981). Other disqualified incumbents
were Ibrahim Yazdi, Foreign Minister during the Bazargan’s provisional government, and members of the IFM
such as Azam Talegani, the founder's daughter of the IFM, and Idale Sahabi. They became targets of
disqualification because their liberal political views and opposition to the Supreme Leader Khomeini. Membersof the IFM were disqualified in the next parliamentary election in 1988 again.
Excluding the Islamic Left in the fourth and fifth parliamentary elections (1992-1996)
In addition to liberalists, the Islamic Left, that won the majority in the third parliament (1989-92), came to bedisqualified after the death of Khomeini in 1989. The reason of ousting the Islamic Left from the electoral race
was related with the succession issue. On June 3, 1989, the death of first Supreme Leader Khomeini was announced,
and within less than twenty-four hours 83 members of the Assembly of Experts5 began debating the issue of postKhomeini leadership. The assembly finally chose Ali Khamenei, with 64 votes in favor and 16 against (Bakhtiari
1996, 176). The Khamenei’s succession met opposition from Hossein Ali Montazeri’s supporters, most of whom
belonged to a political party of the Islamic Left named the Association of the Combatant Clerics (Majma’-eRowḥaniyān--e Mobārez, MRM). Montazeri used to have credentials to succeed Khomeini, but he was deprivedof them by Khomeini himself due to conflict over the punishment of political prisoners. In February 1989,
Montazeri said in Qom, “[R]evolutionary rhetoric isolated us from the world. People in the world think that weare only doing murder. We must release political prisoners immediately and the military force should work forreconstruction after the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), not for arresting political prisoners (Akhavi 2008, 651).” Morteza
Alviri, a deputy from Tehran who visited Montazeri in Qom, said, “80 to 100 parliamentary deputies followed theesteemed source of emulation of Montazeri independently of any political line (Sarabi 1994,92).” The statement
implies that Alviri and his colleagues in the third parliament did not agree with instituting Khamenei as leader butthat they rather supported Montazeri, the Khamenei's strongest rival.
On June 15, 1991, the Guardian Council introduced a new interpretation of “approbatory supervision” (neẓārate estesbāvī) or authority of supervising elections referred to in Article 99 of the constitution. In the 1980s theGuardian Council’s main role was limited to a post-election examination of allegations of fraud. But with the newinterpretation, the Guardian Council was now given power to carry out pre-election disqualification of candidates(Randjbar-Daemi 2018,87-88). The new interpretation of “approbatory supervision” was criticized by the Islamic
Left. Mehdi Karrobi, head of the MRM, said “approbatory supervision” did not exist in the Khomeini era. Some5

According to the constitution, the Assembly of Expert (Majles-e Khobregān-e Rahbarī) is composed of 88 clerics and its task is to select theSupreme Leader (Article 107) and to supervise and dismiss the leader (Article 111).

scholars saw this as the Guardian Council's abuse of the constitution to remove a rival faction (Fattāḥī
Zafarqandī1397,324).”
Incumbent MRM candidates disqualified in 1992 included Alviri, who openly expressed his loyalty to
Montazeri and Asadollah Bayat, who opposed "approbatory supervision". Another disqualified candidate was
Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a deputy from Tehran, former commander of the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in
Qazvin province. Despite his background of revolutionary and anti-American movements, Asgharzadeh’s reelection was prevented by the Guardian Council. The official reason for his disqualification was not announced,
but his affiliation with the MRM was most probably a factor.6
Similar to 1992, members of MRM and a leftist political party, the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution
Organization (MIRO) (Sāzemān-e Mojāḥedīn-e Enqerāb-e Eslāmī), were disqualified at the 1996 parliamentaryelection. The MIRO’s official newspaper ‘Aṣr-e mā wrote, “Our members were disqualified because we were
simply against “approbatory supervision”; namely, we were considered to be against the constitution.”7 Behzad
Nabavi, head of the MIRO, said, “We have deeply believed in and followed the Velāyat-e Faqīh (Guardianship ofIslamic Jurisprudence) 8 since the beginning of the revolution. But now, loyalty to the Velāyat-e faqīh ismeaningless to be qualified.”9 Criticizing the Guardian Council for abusing the constitution, the MRM and the
MIRO boycotted the 1996 parliamentary election.
To summarize, in addition to liberalists who were disqualified during the Khomeini period, the Islamic Leftcame to be removed from the list of eligible candidates during the Khamenei’s rule, as they were considered as
opponents of the leadership.
Temporal inclusion of reformists in the sixth parliamentary election (2000)
The 2000 parliamentary election was the first parliamentary election held after the victory of a reformist
candidate in the 1997 Presidential election, which was a fought between Nateq Nuri and Mohammad Khatami.
Due to his political career, Nateq Nuri was well known to the public. He served as Minister of Interior (1981-1985)
and Speaker of the parliament (1992-2000). He was one of the founding members of a political party of the Islamic
Right named the Society of the Combatant Clergy (Jāme‘eh-ye Rowḥāniyāt-e Mobārez, JRM), headed by the thenPresident Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997). Meanwhile Nuri’s rival Khatami served as Minister ofIslamic Guidance (1982-1992) and was one of the founding members of a political party of the Islamic Left, MRM.
During the election campaign, Khatami promised to promote freedom of speech and the civil society, a slogan that
attracted discontents with politics dominated by the Islamic Right or conservatives. Khatami’s supporters weremainly younger generations who did not remember the 1979 revolution, in which the conservative Islamists cameto rule the country.
This background of the rise of reformists made the Guardian Council acknowledge credentials of members of
the MRM and MIRO as well as newly emerged reformist parties such as the Iran Islamic Participation Front (IIPF)(Jabhe-ye Moshārekat-e Iran-e Eslāmī) headed by Khatami’s younger brother Mohammad-Reza Khatami and the6
After the revolution, Asgarzadeh served in the Construction Jihad (Jihād-e Sāzandegī), which is an important institution for alleviating poverty anddeveloping the suburbs. He was also one of the leaders of the Muslim Students (Dāneshjūyān-e Mosalmān), which attacked the American embassyin Tehran in November ,1979. Eṭṭelā‘āt, “Barādar-e Ebrāhīm Asgharzadeh,” April 12, 19847
Ἁṣr-e mā, “Neẓārat-e Esteṣbāvī Melāk-e Paẕīresh-e Qānūn-e Asāsī?” January 24, 1996.
8
Velāyat-e Faqīh is the idea of governance introduced by Imam Khomeini. Khomeini preached that while the last Imam is hidden, a source ofimitation in the Shi’ite Muslim community has to supervise this governance.
9Salām, “Tā Konūn dar Koll-e Keshvar Ṣarāḥiyat-e 58 Nafar az Afrād-e Jenāḥ-e Chap Rad shode ast,” February 26, 1996.

Solidarity Party (Ḥezb-e Hambastegī). Thus, the 2000 parliamentary election is an exceptional case in which theIslamic Left and reformists, otherwise considered as opponents to the Supreme Leader, were allowed to run.
Excluding reformists in the seventh to ninth parliamentary elections (2004-2012)
The Guardian Council’s concession to reformist candidates was only temporal. In 2004, it resumed a strict
approach in the screening for the seventh parliamentary election. 165 incumbent members of the parliament
registered to seek re-election, but more than half of them (85) were disqualified. Table 1 shows names and party
affiliations of disqualified candidates in Tehran.
Table 1: Disqualified incumbents in Tehran (2004)

Name of candidate

Party affiliation

Elahi Kulai

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Elias Hazrati

Solidarity Party

Behzad Nabavi

Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization

Davvod Soleimani

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Ali-Akbar Mousavi Khoiniha

Association of the Combatant Clerics

Mohammad Reza Khatami

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Ali Shakouri-Rad

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Fatemeh Haqiqatjo

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Mohsen Armin

Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization

Mohsen Safaei Farahani

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Mohsen Mirdamadi

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Mohammad Naeimipour

Iran Islamic Participation Front

Note: The Iran Islamic Participation Front, the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization, the Association of the
Combatant Clerics, and the Solidarity Party are all major reformist parties and groups.
Source: Sharq, February 16, 2004.

Disqualified members of the sixth parliament were those who once tried to challenge the Guardian Council
during their four-years tenure. In 2001, the sixth parliament passed a draft law to limit the authority of the Guardian
Council to screen candidates. Reformists regarded sources of information used for the screening as biased, because
the Guardian Council collected information mostly from institutions, affiliated with the Supreme Leader orconservative factions. Thus, the new law intended to limit the institutions from which the Guardian Council could
collect information about registered candidates to only four that were written in the constitution. However, theGuardian Council vetoed the law and the sixth parliament failed to restrict the Guardian Council’s screening.10
In the 2008 parliamentary election, reformists were once again disqualified. Disqualified candidates included
those who played an important role in the Khatami administration. They were Morteza Haji, the Minister of
Education, Abbas Kalantari, the Minister of Agriculture, Ahmad Khorram, the Minister of Roads andTransportation, and Abd allah Naseri, the director of the national news agency. Moreover, the newly established10
The Guardian Council’s veto is constitutionalized. Principle 4 of the constitution writes that “All civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative,
cultural, military, political, etc., laws and regulations should be based on Islamic rules and standards. This principle will absolutely or in general be
dominant over all of the principles of the Constitution, and other laws and regulations as well, and any determination in this connection will be adeby the religious jurists of the Council of Guardians (Ramazani 1980, 189).”

reformist party named the National Trust Party, NTP (Ḥezb-e E’temād-e Mellī) became the main target of
disqualification. The NTP was led by Mehdi Karrobi, who used to be a leader of the Islamic left party MRM. Afterlosing the 2005 presidential election, he created the NTP.11 The Guardian Council disqualified 70 percent ofregistered candidates of the NTP, and as a result, the party lost candidates in 160 out of 207 electoral districts. For
instance, Reza Nouruzadeh, an incumbent deputy from third to seventh parliaments (a member of the executive
board of the NTP) was disqualified. 12 Besides, members of leftist MIRO and other reformist parties weredisqualified like the 2004 parliamentary election.
The 2012 parliamentary election was the first national election held after the post-election protest in 200913.
In this election, the Guardian Council regarded those who cast doubt on President Ahmadinejad’s leadership wereas opponents of the Supreme Leader because Khamenei supported re-election of Ahmadinejad in 2009 andsuppressed mass protests which claimed that the Guardian Council rigged vote count. For example, Chairman of
the committee of social affairs of the eighth parliament, Hamid Reza Katuziyan, was disqualified. Katuziyan wasa member of the committee that investigated the 2009 presidential election and accused Ahmadinejad of using
government funds for his re-election. 14 Katuziyan also demanded that Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad(2009-2013), who was in charge of the election implementation in 2009, apologize to people and resign when the
Iranian media disclosed that he had embezzled three billion riyals from a bank.15 Furthermore, incumbent deputiesof the parliamentary committee of Article 90, 16 that investigated corruption cases of the Ahmadinejadadministration, were also disqualified. They included Haji Mohammad Movahhed, a deputy from Behbahan who
had served as a parliamentarian for 16 years from the fifth to eighth parliaments, and Mohammad Ebrahim
Nekunam, a deputy from Golpeygan and chairman of the committee of Article 90 in the seventh and eighth
parliaments.17
In sum, the post-electoral protest in 2009 made the Guardian Council fear the rise of an opposition force that
could become popular among the majority of people. With loss of candidates the reformists were able to mobilize
frustrated mass for demonstrations against electoral fraud even though the Supreme Leader accepted the outcomeof the election. Thus, the Guardian Council completely excluded candidates who were involved in the post-election
protest and who opposed the Supreme Leader’s decision, so as to prevent them from being elected or from gaining
further popularity.

11
Karrobi used to be a leader of MRM. But, he left from MRM and established the National Trust Party, realizing that he can no longer get support
from members of MRM in the 2005 presidential election. (‘Abd allah Shamsī 1393, 23).
12E‘temād-e Mellī, “Fehrest-e Nāmzadhā-ye rad-e Ṣalāḥīyat shode Ḥezb-e E‘temād-e Mellī,” Bahaman 3, 1386 [January 23,2008].
13
On June 12, 2009, state media announced a landslide re-election victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad only hours after the polls closed. However,losing candidates Mir- Hosein Mousavi, the last Prime Minister (1981-89), and Mehdi Karrubi13, the chief of the National Trust Party, did not accept
the result, asserting that the Guardian Council rigged the vote count and that Mousavi was the true winner. In sympathy with the losing candidates,
thousands of Iranians took to the street to stage mass protests, chanting, “Where is my vote?” The protest of 2009 was the largest anti-government
protest since the revolution. On June 13, 2009, the day the election results were announced, more than 100 reformists were arrested. Protests took
place at Tehran University, Amirkavir University, and Shahid Beheshti University, and large demonstrations across the country (Elson et al. 2012,
14, 17-18).
14
Masih Alinezhad, “Vezārat-e Keshvar va Rad-e Ṣalāḥiyat-e Namāyadegān-e Montaqed-e Dowlat-e Īran,” BBC News Persian, 22 January 2012,https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2012/01/120122_l39_alinejad_disqualification_majlis9th. Accessed: 22 October 2019.
15
Ibid. Of note is that the Interior ministry is in charge of elections along with the Guardian Council, although the degree of their authority is notequal.
16
The Article 90 committee is charged with responding to complaints from the public. The Article 90 states: “Whoever has a complaint concerning
the work of the Assembly or the executive power or the judicial power can forward his complaint in writing to the Assembly. The Assembly must
investigate his complaint and give a satisfactory reply. In cases where the complaint relates to the executive or the judiciary, the Assembly must
demand proper investigation in the matter and an adequate explanation from them, and announce the results within a reasonable time. In cases
where the subject of the complaint is of public interest, the reply must be made public.” Translated by the Iranian embassy in London, 1992.
17
E‘temād, “Rad-e Ṣalāḥīyat Chandīn Dīge az Namāyandegān-e Fe‘lī” February 13, 2012

5. Conclusion
The paper has examined whether the Guardian Council's candidate screening was consistent for the period
from 1984 to 2012. The analysis of the elections revealed variations of the screening practice. The pattern showsa gradual expansion of the target of disqualification from liberalists, to the Islamic Left and reformists. Why wasit necessary for the Guardian Council to expand the target of disqualification? A plausible explanation may be alegitimacy crisis of the Supreme Leader after the death of Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic. It is also
necessary to explain the exceptional case of 2000, in which most reformists were approved, in a more satisfactory
way. To clarify this puzzling phenomenon, a further analysis is needed about perceptions of the Supreme Leader
as he can influence the decisions of the Guardian Council about candidate screening.

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Appendix
Table 1: Newspaper Sources

Parliamentary Election

Reformist

MiddleConservative

1984Ἁṣr-e ĀzadegānEṭṭelā‘ātJomhurī-e Eslāmī, Keyhān1988ĀzadegānEṭṭelā‘ātJomhurī-e Eslāmī, Keyhān1992Ἁṣr-e māEṭṭelā‘ātJomhurī-e Eslāmī, Keyhān

1996

Salām

Eṭṭelā‘āt

2000

Sharq

Eṭṭelā‘āt, Īrān2004

Yās-e noEṭṭelā‘āt, ĪrānJomhurī-e Eslāmī, KeyhānEṭṭelā‘āt, ĪrānJomhurī-e Eslāmī, Keyhān

2008

Hayāt-e now, E‘temād–e MellīResālat, Jomhurī-e Eslāmī,
KeyhānResālat, Jomhurī-e Eslāmī,
Keyhān2012

Sharq, E‘temādEṭṭelā‘āt, ĪrānJomhurī-e Eslāmī, Keyhān

2016

Sharq, E‘temādEṭṭelā‘āt, ĪrānJomhurī-e Eslāmī, Keyhān(Note1) Since reformist newspapers were frequently banned, this paper used various sources for reformist candidates’
data.

Figure 1: Structure of candidate screening in Iran’s parliamentary election
Supreme Leader

President
appoint
appoint

appoint

Screening processes under
the Presidency

Chief of Supreme Judicial Council
Interior Minister

appoint

Screening processes under
the Supreme Leader

Guardian Council
Central Supervising Committee
appoint

reportappoint

Re-examine 1st
result

2nd result

2nd result
Supervising committee in constituency
1st result

Governor in constituency

Executive Committee inconstituency

candidatelist

selectFinal result

Residents in constituency

approve/reject
Request re-examinationof credential

2nd result

register

1st result

Candidates

candidate
information

Ministry of Information
Attorney general inconstituency
Census bureau in constituency
Police in constituency