Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 3
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Ayatollah Ali Movahedi Kermani was appointed as head of the Iran's Combatant Clergy Association party, the Islamic Republic's Fars news agency reported Dec. 3.
Movahedi Kermani who is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council replaces the late Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani who died in October after being a long time in coma.
Movahedi Kermani was earlier representative of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The Combatant Clergy Association is a pragmatic-conservative clerical party, and was the majority party in the fourth and fifth parliaments after the 1979 Islamic revolution. It was founded in 1977 by a group of clerics with intentions to use culture to overthrow the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Its founding members were Ali Khamenei, Morteza Motahhari, Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad Javad Bahonar, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Mofatteh.