Iran’s parliament, known as the Majlis, operates under the 1979 Constitution of the Islamic Republic, a document that was designed to consolidate theocratic authority rather than anticipate every political crisis that might arise over the following decades. When observers say there is “no constitutional framework for this situation,” they are pointing to a genuine structural gap: the Iranian constitution does not provide clear procedural mechanisms for scenarios where the Supreme Leader becomes incapacitated, where the elected government and the clerical establishment reach an irreconcilable impasse, or where mass popular unrest demands institutional reform that the existing order was built to prevent. The Guardian Council, the Assembly of Experts, and the Supreme Leader form a layered system of religious oversight that can veto parliamentary action, leaving the Majlis without independent constitutional tools to navigate uncharted territory. This matters beyond Iran’s borders because the Trump administration has repeatedly cited Iran’s internal governance failures as justification for maximum pressure sanctions, withdrawal from the JCPOA, and broader Middle East policy decisions. Whether one agrees with that framing or not, understanding the actual constitutional structure of Iran’s government is essential for evaluating claims made by American policymakers about regime instability, democratic deficits, and the prospects for internal change.
This article breaks down the specific constitutional limitations facing Iran’s parliament, examines historical precedents where those gaps became crises, and considers what this means for U.S. foreign policy and accountability. The practical consequences are not abstract. In 2024 and into 2025, Iran faced a succession question following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, and the constitutional provisions that governed that transition exposed how narrow and theocratically controlled the parliamentary role actually is. This article covers the structural design of the Majlis, its relationship to unelected bodies, the specific constitutional gaps, historical stress tests, and what American observers should understand before accepting any administration’s characterization of Iranian politics at face value.
Table of Contents
- What Constitutional Powers Does Iran’s Parliament Actually Have?
- Why the Iranian Constitution Fails During Succession and Leadership Crises
- Historical Stress Tests Where the Constitutional Gaps Became Visible
- How U.S. Policy Engages With Iran’s Constitutional Reality
- The Guardian Council’s Vetting Power and Democratic Erosion
- The IRGC Factor Outside the Constitutional Map
- What Constitutional Reform Would Require and Why It Remains Unlikely
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Constitutional Powers Does Iran’s Parliament Actually Have?
The Majlis is a 290-seat legislative body elected by popular vote every four years. On paper, it drafts and passes legislation, approves the national budget, and has the authority to question and even impeach cabinet ministers. Iranian voters do participate in these elections, and voter turnout has historically been significant, though it has declined sharply in recent cycles as public disillusionment has grown. The 2024 parliamentary elections saw turnout estimates around 41 percent, the lowest since the Islamic Republic’s founding, a number that itself signals a crisis of legitimacy. However, every piece of legislation the Majlis passes must be approved by the Guardian Council, a 12-member body composed of six clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and six jurists nominated by the head of the judiciary, who is also appointed by the Supreme Leader. The Guardian Council reviews all laws for compatibility with both the constitution and Islamic law, and its interpretation of Islamic law is final and non-appealable. The Iranian constitution addresses the question of Supreme Leader succession in Article 111, which assigns the responsibility to the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of senior clerics elected by the public but only from candidates pre-approved by the Guardian Council. The Assembly is supposed to select a new Supreme Leader if the current one dies, becomes incapacitated, or is deemed unable to fulfill his duties. In theory, it can also remove a sitting Supreme Leader who no longer meets the qualifications of the office. In practice, the Assembly has never exercised this removal power in the 45-year history of the Islamic Republic, and its proceedings on succession have been conducted with virtually no transparency. The problem becomes acute when you consider what the constitution does not say. It provides no timeline for the Assembly to act. It offers no mechanism for interim governance if the Assembly deadlocks. It does not define what constitutes “incapacity” with any medical or legal specificity. When Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, the transition to Ayatollah khamenei happened within hours, but this was a product of political maneuvering, not constitutional procedure. Ali Khamenei was elevated despite not meeting the original constitutional qualifications for the office, which required the rank of marja, a top-tier religious authority. The constitution was hastily amended to lower the qualification threshold, revealing that the document bends to political reality rather than constraining it. If a succession crisis were to unfold more contentiously, with competing factions within the Assembly or the irgc asserting influence, the Majlis has no constitutional role whatsoever. It cannot nominate candidates, it cannot set deadlines, it cannot serve as an interim governing authority, and it cannot appeal to any court or body to force a resolution. This is not a hypothetical concern. Khamenei is in his mid-eighties, and the question of who follows him has been a subject of intense, largely opaque factional competition for years. The parliament is constitutionally sidelined from the most consequential political event the country will face. The most instructive example came during the 2009 Green Movement. Following the disputed reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, millions of Iranians took to the streets alleging electoral fraud. Reformist members of the Majlis, including allies of defeated candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, attempted to use parliamentary channels to investigate the election results and address the crisis through institutional means. They were blocked at every turn. The Guardian Council, which was constitutionally responsible for certifying election results, declared the election valid after a partial recount it conducted on its own terms. The Majlis had no constitutional authority to compel an independent investigation, to call for new elections, or to override the Guardian Council’s certification. More recently, during the nationwide protests that erupted in September 2022 following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in morality police custody, a small number of Majlis members publicly called for reform of the mandatory hijab laws and greater accountability for security forces. The response was telling: these members were summoned before judicial authorities, threatened with disqualification from future elections, and in some cases had their parliamentary immunity effectively ignored. The constitution provides for parliamentary immunity in Article 86, but the interpretation and enforcement of that immunity falls to the judiciary, which is controlled by appointees of the Supreme Leader. The constitutional protection proved hollow precisely when it was most needed. These episodes reveal a pattern. The Iranian constitution provides the appearance of parliamentary authority and democratic process while concentrating real power in institutions that answer only to the Supreme Leader. When crises arise that demand flexibility, accountability, or democratic responsiveness, the Majlis discovers that its constitutional tools are either nonexistent or subordinate to clerical veto. American policymakers have long struggled with how to characterize the Iranian system, and this characterization has direct policy consequences. The Trump administration, both in its first term and now in its second, has framed Iran as a dictatorship where the will of the people is entirely suppressed. This framing supports a maximum pressure approach: if there are no democratic institutions worth engaging, then sanctions, isolation, and regime change rhetoric become the default tools. The Biden administration, by contrast, attempted to re-engage diplomatically, implicitly treating the elected government as a meaningful negotiating partner capable of delivering on agreements. The truth is more complicated than either framing acknowledges. The Majlis is not a sham parliament in the way that, say, North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly is a sham. Iranian parliamentary elections are contested, factions compete, and legislative debates can be substantive. But the Majlis is also not a sovereign legislature capable of independently directing national policy, particularly on matters of foreign affairs, nuclear development, and military strategy, which fall under the Supreme Leader’s direct authority. When the Trump administration argues that negotiating with Iran’s elected officials is pointless because real power lies elsewhere, there is a constitutional basis for that claim. When critics counter that engaging the reformist faction within the Majlis could shift internal dynamics, they are making a political bet that the constitutional constraints can be informally circumvented. The tradeoff for American policy is real. Maximum pressure may weaken the Iranian economy but has historically strengthened hardliners who argue that the West will never deal fairly with Iran regardless of who is in office. Diplomatic engagement may empower reformists but risks lending legitimacy to a system where the elected branch cannot actually deliver on promises. Neither approach has produced its intended outcome over the past two decades, and honest policy analysis requires acknowledging the constitutional architecture that limits what any Iranian president or parliament can actually do. Perhaps the most significant constitutional mechanism that constrains the Majlis is not what happens after elections but what happens before them. The Guardian Council has the constitutional authority under Article 99 to vet all candidates for parliamentary and presidential elections. This power has been exercised with increasing aggression over time. In the 2024 parliamentary elections, the Guardian Council disqualified approximately 75 percent of registered candidates, including the vast majority of reformists and moderates. The result was a parliament dominated by hardliners and loyalists before a single vote was cast. This vetting power has no meaningful check. Disqualified candidates can appeal to the Guardian Council itself, but the body that disqualified them is the same body reviewing the appeal. There is no independent judiciary, no constitutional court, and no parliamentary mechanism to challenge mass disqualifications. The Majlis cannot legislate changes to the vetting process because any such legislation would itself be reviewed by the Guardian Council and, unsurprisingly, rejected. This creates a constitutional closed loop: the body that controls who enters parliament also controls what parliament can do, and no institution outside the Supreme Leader’s authority can break the cycle. The warning for outside observers is this: turnout figures and election results from Iran are not meaningless, but they must be interpreted within this structural context. A parliament elected from a pre-filtered candidate pool operating under a clerical veto is not the same thing as a freely elected legislature, even if the elections themselves are conducted without outright ballot stuffing. American policymakers and media commentators who cite Iranian election results as evidence of either democratic vitality or democratic failure need to account for the vetting bottleneck that shapes outcomes long before voters arrive at polling stations. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps occupies a unique position in Iran’s power structure that the constitution barely addresses. The IRGC controls vast economic enterprises estimated at between 20 and 40 percent of Iran’s GDP, operates its own intelligence services, runs the Basij paramilitary force, and commands the Quds Force for extraterritorial operations. While the constitution places the armed forces under the Supreme Leader’s command, it does not specifically grant the IRGC the economic and political role it has assumed over four decades. The Majlis has occasionally attempted to legislate oversight of IRGC-affiliated economic entities, and these efforts have been quietly shelved or blocked. When the constitutional framework is silent, the institution with the most coercive power fills the vacuum, and that institution is not the parliament. This is directly relevant to American sanctions policy. Many U.S. sanctions target IRGC-affiliated entities and individuals, but the Iranian parliament has no constitutional authority to restructure or restrain the IRGC, even if it wanted to. Demanding that Iran’s elected government rein in the Revolutionary Guards as a condition for sanctions relief is asking the Majlis to do something the constitution does not empower it to do. Any amendment to the Iranian constitution requires the approval of the Supreme Leader, who initiates the process by consulting with the Expediency Council and then putting proposed changes to a national referendum. The Majlis does not have the power to initiate constitutional amendments. This means that the very constitutional gaps that limit parliamentary authority can only be addressed with the permission of the figure who benefits most from those gaps. The 1989 amendments, which eliminated the prime minister’s office and lowered the qualifications for Supreme Leader, were initiated by Khomeini himself shortly before his death and ratified in a referendum conducted during a period of intense national grief and loyalty. No comparable political window exists today. Looking ahead, the question of whether Iran’s constitutional structure can survive the next succession is genuinely open. A contested or prolonged transition could expose the constitutional silences in ways that force improvisation, as happened in 1989 but under potentially far less stable conditions. For American observers and policymakers, the key insight is that Iran’s parliament is not an institution that can be pressured or incentivized into transforming the system from within. The constitution was designed to prevent exactly that. Any realistic assessment of Iran’s political trajectory must start from this structural reality rather than from wishful projections about democratic evolution through existing institutions. Iran’s parliament operates within a constitutional framework that systematically subordinates elected authority to clerical and military power. The Guardian Council’s vetting and legislative review authority, the Supreme Leader’s control over the judiciary and armed forces, and the Majlis’s exclusion from succession and constitutional amendment processes all combine to create a system where the democratic component is real but structurally constrained. When observers say there is no constitutional framework for a given crisis, they are identifying a design feature, not a bug. The 1979 constitution was written to ensure that revolutionary theocratic authority would not be vulnerable to the same popular pressures that brought it to power. For American policy, this constitutional reality demands honest engagement. The Trump administration’s characterization of Iran as a straightforward dictatorship is partially correct about where power resides but oversimplifies the internal dynamics that could matter during a succession crisis. Advocates of diplomatic engagement must reckon with the fact that the elected officials they would negotiate with cannot constitutionally deliver on many of the commitments that would matter most. What is needed is policy that accounts for the actual architecture of Iranian governance, not a caricature of it, and that maintains accountability for American claims about what sanctions, pressure, or engagement can realistically achieve given the structural constraints on Iran’s own institutions. Yes. The Majlis is an elected legislative body with 290 members serving four-year terms. It debates and passes legislation, approves budgets, and can question ministers. However, all legislation must be approved by the unelected Guardian Council, and candidates are vetted before they can run, which significantly limits its independence and authority. No. That power belongs exclusively to the Assembly of Experts, a body of senior clerics. The Majlis has no constitutional role in selecting, evaluating, or removing the Supreme Leader. The Assembly of Experts has never exercised its theoretical removal power in the history of the Islamic Republic. Constitutional amendments can only be initiated by the Supreme Leader after consulting with the Expediency Council, then approved by national referendum. The Majlis cannot propose, draft, or initiate constitutional changes on its own. This means the structural limitations on parliamentary power can only be removed with the consent of the person who benefits from those limitations. Prospective candidates for parliamentary and presidential elections must register with the Guardian Council, which reviews their qualifications including their loyalty to the Islamic Republic and the principle of velayat-e faqih, or clerical guardianship. The Council can disqualify candidates without detailed public justification, and appeals are reviewed by the same body. In recent elections, disqualification rates have exceeded 70 percent. The constitution places all armed forces under the Supreme Leader’s command but does not specifically address the IRGC’s extensive economic and political activities. The Revolutionary Guards have expanded far beyond their original military mandate into business, intelligence, and domestic security, largely outside any constitutional framework that the parliament could use to exercise oversight.
Why the Iranian Constitution Fails During Succession and Leadership Crises
Historical Stress Tests Where the Constitutional Gaps Became Visible
How U.S. Policy Engages With Iran’s Constitutional Reality
The Guardian Council’s Vetting Power and Democratic Erosion
The IRGC Factor Outside the Constitutional Map
What Constitutional Reform Would Require and Why It Remains Unlikely
Conclusion
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Iran have a real parliament?
Can Iran’s parliament remove the Supreme Leader?
Why can’t the Iranian parliament just amend the constitution?
How does the Guardian Council’s candidate vetting work?
What role does the IRGC play in Iran’s constitutional structure?
You Might Also Like