Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, has announced that the assembly's new chairman will be elected March 10. Following the death of the former chairman, Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, five months ago, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi had assumed the role temporarily. However, signs indicate that the chairman's election among the assembly's board of directors is as vague as the outcome of the 2013 presidential election; it’s still unclear who will be elected chairman: Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, Shahroudi or a conservative figure?

The Assembly of Experts is charged with electing Iran's supreme leader and supervising his activities. Members of the assembly are elected for eight-year terms from lists of candidates by a direct public vote. The next election for members of the Assembly of Experts is to be held February 2016.

On March 8, 2011, Mahdavi Kani was chosen as the assembly's chairman following Rafsanjani’s decision not to run for the chairmanship. Before Mahdavi Kani’s candidacy, Rafsanjani had said that he wouldn’t run if Mahdavi Kani stepped forward.

At the time, some analysts believed that replacing Rafsanjani was another move to further marginalize him by hard-line conservatives and then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although, according to a source who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, if anyone except Mahdavi Kani — who was considered relatively moderate — had announced his candidacy, Rafsanjani would have nominated himself.