Profile: Three major moderate hopefuls for Iran's Assembly of Experts

Iranians are gearing up for voting in one of the country's most important elections on Friday to choose 88 members for the Assembly of Experts.

As a deliberative body of Islamic theologians or Mujtahids, elected for eight years, the Assembly of Experts is charged with electing and removing the Supreme Leader of Iran and supervising his activities.

Out of the 166 qualified candidates, majority of them conservatives in their religious and political orientations, three major clerics, namely Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and Hassan Rouhani are considered as the leading moderate figures to win seats with the assembly:

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani:

Rafsanjani, born in August 1934 in Iran's Bahreman, is an influential Iranian politician and religious scholar, who was the former president of Iran.

He was the head of the Assembly of Experts from 2007 till 2011 but then he decided not to nominate himself for the post. He is also the incumbent chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of the Establishment.

Rafsanjani was elected chairman of the Iranian parliament in 1981 and served until 1989. He also served as president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. In 2005, he ran for a third term in office, placing first in the first round of elections but ultimately losing to hardline rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the run-off round of the 2005 presidential election.

He has been described as a pragmatic centrist. He supports a free market position domestically, favoring privatization of state-owned industries, and a moderate position internationally, seeking to avoid conflict with the U.S. and the West. In May 2013, Rafsanjani entered the race for the June 2013 presidential elections, but he was not qualified by the Guardian Council. Instead, he supported the incumbent President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani.

Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi:

Shahroudi, born in September 1948 in Iraqi city of Najaf, is a moderate Iranian-Iraqi Shiite scholar and cleric. He lived in Iraq anD attended the seminaries in Najaf before the Islamic revolution in Iran. Following the Islamic revolution in 1979, he returned to Iran.

According to Al-Monitor, he was a member of Iraq's Islamic Dawa Party and also the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. He served as a member of Iran's Guardian Council before he was appointed as the head of Iran's Judiciary from 1999 until 2009. He is currently a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Discernment Council of the Establishment, as well as a member of Iran's Guardian Council. In July 2011, Shahroudi was appointed by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to head an arbitration body to resolve ongoing disputes between the administration and the parliament.

Hassan Rouhani:

Rouhani, born in November 1948 in Iran's Sorkheh city, is the seventh president of Iran, in office since 2013. He is a former lawmaker, academic and former diplomat.

He has been a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts since 1999, a member of the Expediency Council since 1991, and a member of the Supreme National Security Council since 1989.

Rouhani was deputy speaker of the fourth and fifth terms of Iran Majlis (parliament), and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005. In the latter capacity, he was the country's top negotiator with the EU3, namely, the UK, France and Germany, on nuclear technology in Iran.

In May 2013, Rouhani registered for the presidential election and was elected as president of Iran on June 15, defeating Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and four other candidates. He took office in August 2013. In July 2015, his nuclear negotiating team succeeded in clinching a historical deal with the six world powers over the country's disputed nuclear program, which went into effect last month. In domestic policy, he moderately encourages personal freedom and free access to information and has been described as a centrist who has improved Iran's diplomatic relations with other countries through "interaction."

Iran's Assembly of Experts is an important Iranian political institution, since it assures the nation that there would be no vacuum in the leadership of the country, Rouhani said earlier.

The 2016 election of the Assembly of Experts is important in that it may influence the conservative-dominated texture of the assembly as the moderates could gain louder voice over the future leadership of the country.

As a crucial move in its vetting process of the candidates, Iran's Guardian Council, on 10 February 2016, disqualified the nomination of Hassan Khomeini who is the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and is known as the moderate-reformist in Iran's political scene. Endit