Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s parliament on Tuesday re-elected conservative Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as its speaker, reaffirming its far-right makeup following a helicopter crash that killed the country’s president and foreign minister.
Of the 287 lawmakers who voted, 198 backed Qalibaf to retain the position he first assumed in 2021. He initially became president after a series of failed presidential bids and 12 years as leader of Iran’s capital, in which He built the Tehran metro and supported the construction of modern skyscrapers.
Many, however, know Qalibaf for his support as a Revolutionary Guard general for a violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999. He also reportedly ordered the use of live firearms against Iranian students in 2003, while serving as the country’s police chief.
In Tuesday’s vote, his rival Mojtaba Zonnouri, a hardline Shiite cleric who once headed parliament’s national security committee, won 60 votes. Manouchehr Mottaki, former foreign minister under hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, received five votes.
Qalibaf had no immediate comment after the vote. March’s parliamentary election saw the country’s lowest turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Of those elected to the 290-seat body, hardliners hold more than 230 seats, according to an Associated Press poll.
Qalibaf, a trained pilot, served in the paramilitary Guard during the country’s bloody war with Iraq in the 1980s. After the conflict, he served as head of the Guard’s construction arm, Khatam al-Anbia, for several years leading reconstruction efforts.
Qalibaf later served as head of the Guard air force, when in 1999 he co-signed a letter to reformist President Mohammad Khatami amid student protests in Tehran over the government’s closure of a reformist newspaper and a subsequent crackdown by security forces. . The letter warned Khatami that the Guard would take unilateral action unless he agreed to quell the demonstrations.
The violence around the protests caused several deaths, hundreds of injuries and thousands of arrests.
Qalibaf then served as Iran’s police chief, modernizing the force and implementing the country’s 110 emergency telephone number. However, a leaked recording of a subsequent meeting between Qalibaf and members of the Guard’s Basij volunteer force included him stating that he ordered shots to be used on protesters in 2003, as well as praising the violence used in Iran’s Green Movement protests. in 2009.
Qalibaf ran unsuccessful presidential campaigns in 2005, 2013 and 2017, the last of which he withdrew in support of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi later became president and was killed in the May 19 helicopter crash that also killed Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six others.
Iran’s parliament plays a secondary role in the country’s government, although it can intensify pressure on a presidential administration when deciding on the annual budget and other important bills. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, has the final say on all major state matters.
Iran will hold presidential elections on June 28 to replace Raisi. A five-day registration period for candidates will open on Thursday.
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