Iran’s Parliament Chooses Khamenei Loyalist as Speaker

Iran’s parliament on Thursday chose Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf as its new speaker, replacing Ali Larijani, who had held the post since 2008. A former air force commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a three-time presidential candidate, Qalibaf is a corrupt reactionary and a leading advocate of violence against peaceful protestors.

Qalibaf owes his ascension to his deferential, if not subservient, relationship with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Both men hail from the holy city of Mashhad, providing the basis for a more intimate relationship than Khamenei enjoys with other loyalists. In return for Khamenei’s patronage, Qalibaf has pursued policies designed to solidify Khamenei’s power in the face of elite and popular opposition to his rule.

As head of the IRGC air force, for example, Qalibaf was one of several officers who threatened former reformist President Mohammad Khatami with a coup d’etat if Khatami did not quell Iran’s 1999 student protests. As chief of police in 2003, Qalibaf allowed regime forces to assault student demonstrators commemorating the 1999 protests. Qalibaf also condoned and at times authorized the use of violence against protesters in 2009, 2017, and most recently during the November 2019 uprising. He is likely to play a leading role in crushing future unrest as well.

At times, Qalibaf has presented himself as a moderate with regard to foreign policy, yet he was a close friend of the late Qassem Soleimani, the former chief of the IRGC’s Qods Force and the regime’s strategic mastermind, whom U.S. forces killed in January. Upon assuming his new post, Qalibaf denounced negotiations with the United States as “futile” and described his strategy as “confronting the terrorist America” in order “to finish the revenge for martyr Soleimani’s blood.”

Nonetheless, Qalibaf was cunning enough to brand himself as a “pragmatic” or technocratic politician for Western audiences during his tenure as Tehran’s mayor (2005-2017) in order to attract Western investment and know-how for the regime.

Qalibaf’s selection as speaker illustrates how the Islamic Republic has become an IRGC-controlled state with “elected” institutions serving as window dressing. Qalibaf and his parliamentary allies responsible for human rights abuses, including the killing of peaceful protestors, should be sanctioned as part of the U.S. maximum pressure policy.

Alireza Nader is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he also contributes to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP) and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from Alireza, CEFP, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Alireza on Twitter @AlirezaNader. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.