Why didn’t Rouhani publish the response of the Guardian Council?
Rouhani did not publish the response of the Guardian Council. On May 14th, in letters titled ‘Defense of the Republic,’ he detailed the Guardian Council’s response regarding the reasons for disqualifying him in the sixth round of the Assembly of Experts elections and defended himself.
Rouhani did not publish the Guardian Council’s letter, possibly due to the confidential nature of the seal on it. But can the Guardian Council’s response to Rouhani contain classified information?
Article 108 of the Constitution regarding the Assembly of Experts elections states that the law related to the number and conditions of experts, the quality of their selection, and their internal regulations for the first term must be prepared by the first jurisprudents of the Guardian Council and approved by their majority vote, reaching the final approval of the Leader.
Subsequent changes and revisions to this law and the approval of other regulations related to the duties of the experts in their qualifications are the responsibility of the experts themselves. The first law on the Assembly of Experts elections, using the word ‘law’ instead of ‘regulation’ in Article 108, is unique and was prepared by the first jurisprudents of the Guardian Council and approved by the Leader on October 1, 1980.
This law on amendments was in effect in the years 1361, 1369, 1385, 1386, and 1394, although it was announced in the fifth term of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership that a new text was approved on 5th of Mehr month, 1402, replacing the previous law. In reality, the amended version is the same as the previous text.
The final text of the law, consisting of 31 articles and 23 notes, includes seven chapters in the order of the number of experts, the duration of the term, the quality of the elections, the conditions of the candidates, the conditions of the voters, the law on the campaign activities of the candidates, and complaints and the procedure for handling them.
The Constitution entrusts the approval of the law on the election of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership to the same body, but the delegation of authority to approve relevant regulations such as the executive regulations of the law on the election of the Assembly of Experts, Article 6, and the regulations on the supervision of the elections of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership, Note 1, Article 8, is under the jurisdiction of the Guardian Council.
Although in a single article of the law, the necessity of addressing the complaints of disqualified candidates in various elections, approved on October 11, 1999, for the Assembly of Experts elections, has been exempted, in Article 14 of the Assembly of Experts elections law, it is explicitly stated that the Guardian Council’s jurists will be responsible for responding to candidates after necessary reviews and will inform the candidate in writing and exclusively of the reasons and documents for disqualification or annulment of their votes without referring to the classification of information subject.
Before the revolution, the National Consultative Assembly passed the Law on Punishment for Publication and Disclosure of Confidential and Classified Government Documents on February 18, 1975, which is still valid.
According to Article 1 of this law, government documents refer to any type of written or recorded information related to the duties and activities of ministries, government institutions, and entities affiliated with the government that have been prepared or received by the mentioned authorities.
Furthermore, classified government documents refer to documents the disclosure of which is contrary to the interests of the government or the nation, and confidential government documents refer to documents the disclosure of which is contrary to the specific administrative interests of the organizations mentioned in this article.
In Article 2, the punishment for disclosing confidential and classified documents ranges from six months to three years of imprisonment and from two to ten years. The final article anticipates that the regulations for the storage of classified and confidential government documents and the classification and identification of documents and information will be prepared by the Ministry of Justice and approved by the Council of Ministers.
This regulation was approved by the Council of Ministers on 1 January 1967, consisting of 23 articles. In this regulation, confidential documents are defined as documents whose unauthorized disclosure disrupts the internal affairs of an organization or conflicts with its administrative interests.
Furthermore, the Guardian Council has an internal regulation that was approved by its members on 13 July 2000. However, there is no mention of how the reasons for disqualification and possibly the classification of its information are announced.
Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes raising public awareness in all areas. It is the right of the general public to know why an individual who has held the highest legislative, executive, and security positions for four decades is deemed unqualified.
Recent laws approved by the Iranian Parliament, such as the Law on Publication and Free Access to Information on February 25, 2009, emphasize transparency, free flow of information, and access to government documents while making exceptions for restrictions.
Although the philosophy of keeping the Guardian Council’s response confidential to protect the honor of disqualified candidates has been invalidated, a figure like Hassan Rouhani, with close to three decades of experience in secretaryship and chairmanship of the Supreme National Security Council, was not willing to risk the disclosure of this confidential document to prevent creating a precedent for future disqualifications.
