In Iran, the conservatives are back. The former mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 58, became the president of the new parliament on Thursday (May 28th), meeting the day before for the first time since the parliamentary elections in February. Unsurprisingly, he took the lead of the overwhelming conservative majority when he left the polls. Authoritarian, businesswoman, pragmatic, Mr. Ghalibaf is a man of his time. Baptized in politics at the age of 18 in the desolate battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, at the start of which he had volunteered, he reached in four decades of career the highest spheres of the nomenclature Islamic.
The new president of the Parliament comes today to ring a year in advance the end of the era Hassan Rohani, this president from the clerical seraglio but converted to moderation, who had been elected in 2013 and then reelected four years more late on promises of change that history was then responsible for betraying.
"A technocrat"
Rohani, who will see his second term end in 2021, asked the new parliament on Wednesday to act in harmony with the government. However, there is little support there. Many moderate and reformist candidates were disqualified by the Constitutional Guard Council before the February elections. This institution, under the influence of the Leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had previously created the conditions for the victory of the Conservatives while the disenchanted electorate of their adversaries had turned away from the polls. The February 2020 legislative elections, which marked the return of the "hardliners", also recorded the lowest voter turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Popular legitimacy is not, in any case, the strength of Mr. Ghalibaf, an unsuccessful candidate in three presidential elections since 2005. He has other advantages. "Ghalibaf is neither a traditional religious, nor a fundamentalist ideologue like others in the conservative camp which remains divided", said Ahmad Salamatian, former deputy minister of foreign affairs of the Islamic Republic. "Ghalibaf is a technocrat, a soldier with authoritarian inclinations with influence in the business community. He’s disconnected from revolutionary ideals, he’s tough, of course, but of a new generation ”, specify what informed commentator on Iranian politics.
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