Assembly of Experts
Iranian governmental body
The Assembly of Experts (Persian: مجلس خبرگان رهبری, romanized: Majles-e Khobregān-e Rahbarī, lit. 'Assembly of Experts for Leadership') is the deliberative body of Iran empowered to appoint, supervise, and discharge the Supreme Leader of Iran. The assembly consists of 88 members who are directly elected by the public to serve eight-year terms, and all candidates must be vetted by the Guardian Council.
The assembly consists of 88 Mujtahids that are elected from lists of thoroughly vetted candidates (in 2016, 166 candidates were approved by the Guardians out of 801 who applied to run for the office), by direct public vote for eight-year terms. The number of members has ranged from 82 elected in 1982 to 88 elected in 2016. Current laws require the assembly to meet at least twice every six months. Half of the Guardian Council members are appointed by the Supreme Leader; this model has led to controversy as many reformist or opposition candidates are excluded, limiting voter choice.
According to article 111 of Iran's constitution "whenever the Leader becomes incapable of fulfilling his constitutional duties, or [loses] one of the qualifications mentioned in Articles 5 and 109, or it becomes known that he did not possess some of the qualifications initially, he will be dismissed." A transition process took place after Khomeini's death, and it elevated Ali Khamenei with "inferior religious credentials" from the status of hojatoleslam to the higher rank of ayatollah for the sake of succession.
On 3 March 2026, during the 2026 Iran war, the Israeli Air Force struck and damaged the Assembly of Experts office building in Qom.
1979 Assembly of Experts elections
As the 3 August 1979 elections for the Assembly of Experts drew near, Ruhollah Khomeini began to signal to Iranians which candidates they should support and which they should avoid. He characterized the opposition as "Westernized intellectuals, Marxists, and morally corrupt secular groups" who did not believe in Islam or who opposed the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The public source identifies “Assembly of Experts” as iranian governmental body. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Assembly, Experts and Iranian.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q917663. VIAF identifies the subject as 142347758. The Library of Congress control number is nr97027420. Authority coordinates are 35.688, 51.400. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1982, 2026 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Assembly of Experts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.