TEHRAN – On Wednesday, the election headquarters of the Interior Ministry released the list of candidates for the Assembly of Experts elections.

The 86-member Assembly of Experts chooses and supervises the supreme leader. The Guardian Council, approved 163 candidates out of 495 hopefuls to run for the body. The AE elections are held every eight years.

The candidates are separately listed for each province. The campaign for the election begins from today. The election will be held on Dec. 15 simultaneous with the local council elections. It will be he fourth election for the Assembly of Experts since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The campaign for securing the seats is mainly between rival conservative and reformist clergymen. The reformists, known as the Assembly of Combatant Clerics, and the conservatives, known as the Combatant Clerical Society, are competing for the assembly. Each faction has also supporters among the teachers of the Qom Seminary School.

In an interview with the ISNA news agency on Wednesday, Mohammad Gharvi, the spokesman for the conservative Society of the Qom Seminary Teachers, revealed the names of the candidates for the Tehran constituency.

The Tehran list includes the current chairman of the Assembly of Experts Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, former president and current chairman of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Judiciary chief and the current Guardian Council member Mohammad Yazdi, the Tehran Friday prayer leader Mohammad Emami Kashani, the Guardian Council member Gholamreza Rezvani, the Tehran general prosecutor Ghorbanali Dori Najafabadi, former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rowhani, the Qom Seminary teachers Seyyed Mohammad Kharrazi, Reza Ostadi, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, Mohammad Mohammadi Gilani, Baqeri Kani, Abdolnabi Namazi, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moqaddam, and Mohsen Kazerooni.

The names of some moderate candidates like Rafsanjani and Rowhani will most likely feature in different lists. Mahdi Karrubi, the secretary general of the National Confidence Party (NSP), has announced earlier that Rowhani and Rafsanjani will be included in NSP list.