Ayat Ali Akbar Meshkini, chairman of Iran's powerful Assembly of Experts, dies, leaving the way open for his replacement by the influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The 86-year-old Ayat, who had been suffering from lung problems, was a conservative who had led Friday prayers in the holy city of Qom. Rafsanjani, a pragmatist critic of Iran's rightward drift under President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, is already vice-chairman of the assembly, a directly elected body of ...