Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf re-elected as speaker of Iran’s parliament

Faced two challengers in parliamentary vote

Web Desk

28 May, 2024

World

Former Iranian parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf greets lawmakers. AFP

The Iranian parliament has re-elected the hard-line politician Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as the Speaker of the parliament.

This reaffirms the hard-right composition of Iran’s legislature, coming in the wake of a helicopter crash that resulted in the deaths of Iran’s president and foreign minister.

In the parliamentary vote, 287 lawmakers cast ballots, with 198 of them voting to re-elect Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as the Speaker of the Iranian parliament.

In the parliamentary vote on Tuesday, Qalibaf faced two challengers. Mojtaba Zonnouri, a hard-line Shiite cleric who previously led the parliament’s national security commission, received 60 votes. Manouchehr Mottaki, a former foreign minister under the hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, received 5 votes.

After the vote, Qalibaf did not make any immediate remarks. The parliamentary election in March saw the lowest voter turnout since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Out of the 290 seats in the parliament, hard-line politicians hold over 230 seats, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Qalibaf first assumed this position in 2021, after a series of unsuccessful presidential campaigns and 12 years of serving as the mayor of Iran’s capital city, Tehran.

During his time as mayor, he oversaw the expansion of Tehran’s subway system and supported the development of modern high-rise buildings.

Qalibaf was a Revolutionary Guard general, he supported a violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999. Additionally, while serving as the country’s police chief in 2003, he reportedly ordered the use of live ammunition against Iranian student protesters.

Qalibaf ran failed presidential campaigns in 2005, 2013 and 2017, the last of which saw him withdraw in support of the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi.

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