Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (born August 23, 1961, Torqabeh, Khorasan, Iran) is an establishment figure in Iranian politics, known for his pragmatic top-down management style and plagued by recurrent corruption scandals. He is considered close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as the former commander of its air force (1997–2000). He has a long history in public service, including as chief of Law Enforcement Command (2000–05), mayor of Tehrān (2005–17), and parliament speaker (2020– ). He has run for president four times: in 2005, 2013, 2017, and 2024, although he withdrew in 2017 before election day.

For Britannica’s detailed coverage of the factions, personalities, and significance of this year’s election see What to expect from Iran’s presidential election of 2024.

Early life and military career

Ghalibaf was born in Torqabeh, a town near Mashhad, where several of the most prominent figures of the Islamic Revolution were living before the 1979 revolution. The year after Ghalibaf’s birth the shah pushed a land reform law, and the following year he implemented an aggressive modernization program called the White Revolution. Both policy programs were particularly disruptive to the Mashhad area, where Ghalibaf grew up. The revolution took place when Ghalibaf was 17 years old.

In 1980, shortly after the revolution, Saddam Hussein launched a campaign to capture Iranian territory, and Ghalibaf joined the IRGC to fight. At that time the IRGC was a fledgling state militia tasked with safeguarding the revolution. The pressures of the Iran-Iraq War transformed it into a developed army, and Ghalibaf, who became a commander in 1982, was a part of its growth from the beginning. When the war ended the IRGC was encouraged to take a substantial role in the country’s postwar development, and in 1994 Ghalibaf became the managing director of a firm responsible for infrastructure projects. In 1997 he became commander of the IRGC’s air force.

Student protests and suppression of dissent

The student protests of July 1999 were a pivotal moment for the Islamic Republic, and Ghalibaf was one of the key security figures involved in the crackdown. At the time reformists, who generally backed the Islamic Republic’s clerical oversight but aimed to liberalize the political system, were sweeping elections. Ali Khamenei, the rahbar (supreme leader), was intervening to thwart reforms, while conservatives took aim to depose or prosecute political officials who were sympathetic to reformist causes. Students demonstrated in Tehrān after the government began restricting press outlets that favored reformist ideas. The government crackdown was brutal, killing several students, and hundreds more were injured or detained. Ghalibaf was present for the crackdown, later claiming in some instances that he had personally beaten protesters and saying in other instances that he had refused orders to open fire. During the 2013 presidential election, fellow candidate Hassan Rouhani (who in 1999 was the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council) claimed that Ghalibaf had argued in favor of giving the students permits to protest in order to draw out and crush them.

Shortly after the protests Ghalibaf was one of several IRGC commanders to sign a letter to Mohammad Khatami, the reformist president of Iran (1997–2005), warning that the protest movement was a threat to national security that could force the IRGC to take action. From that point on the reformists became increasingly sidelined and eventually marginalized, while the IRGC transformed into an instrument of suppression and surveillance.

In 2000, before the first anniversary of the protests, Ghalibaf was appointed Iran’s chief of Law Enforcement Command and was tasked with strengthening and modernizing the institution. He oversaw the suppression of student protests in 2003, in which he later claimed he ordered the use of live gunfire, but he was praised by some supporters for putting down the protests without causing any deaths.

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Presidential ambition and tenure as the mayor of Tehrān

Ghalibaf resigned as the police chief in 2005 to run for president. During the campaign he tried to appeal to the center and referred to himself as an Islamic version of Reza Shah, a modernizing but secular strongman whose son and successor, Mohammad Reza, was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. It cost him conservative voters, however, and he came in fourth place. The election raised his profile, and he was later narrowly elected mayor of Tehrān by its city council after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the winner of the presidential election and mayor of Tehrān from 2003, was inaugurated as Iran’s president.

As mayor from 2005 to 2017 Ghalibaf gained a record of effective management. His most hailed achievements included modernizing infrastructure, building whole neighborhoods, and reforming public services. He also beautified the city, invested in art and culture, and expanded green space. Ghalibaf stood in contrast with Ahmadinejad, with whom he developed an intense rivalry despite the two conservatives sharing hawkish security credentials and perspectives. While Ahmadinejad was a populist, Ghalibaf preferred a top-down approach to development and reform.

His popularity as mayor was mitigated, however, by his association with regime security and a reputation for corruption. During his 2013 presidential campaign he took credit for the response to demonstrations in Tehrān against the tampered results of the 2009 presidential election, although the brutal crackdown in the city included security bodies that were outside of his control. Toward the end of his time as mayor, a series of exposés were published that appeared to demonstrate the misuse of municipal assets by Tehrān’s city government while Ghalibaf was mayor.

Ghalibaf was one of several conservative candidates in the 2013 presidential election to replace Ahmadinejad, who had served the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms. He came in a distant second with less than 17 percent of the vote, splitting the conservative camp with Ahmadinejad’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili (11 percent), and two other candidates. The reformist and moderate political camps coalesced around Hassan Rouhani, the sole moderate candidate, who won 50 percent of the vote.

In 2017 Ghalibaf again entered the presidential election to challenge Rouhani. Just days before the election was set to be held, he withdrew and endorsed Ebrahim Raisi to increase the chances of unseating Rouhani. Raisi won only 38 percent of the vote, while Rouhani, whose nuclear agreement with the West had eased economic sanctions on Iran, extended his lead to 57 percent. (Raisi later won the 2021 presidential election, although he was the only high-profile candidate who had registered and qualified in that contest.)

Parliament speaker

Following the 2020 parliamentary elections, Ghalibaf joined the Majles (legislature) and was elected speaker with an overwhelming majority. As speaker he advanced initiatives that were favored by the Office of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC, although he found himself frequently at odds with Raisi after he became president, as well as with the fundamentalist conservative faction known as the Paydari Front, which backed Raisi. In 2022, at a time when Iranians were facing deep economic crisis, Ghalibaf sparked outrage after his family spent lavishly on nursery items in Turkey instead of buying them in Iran. In February 2024, just weeks before the parliamentary elections in March, it was revealed that his son Eshagh had applied for residency in Canada and had declared a large sum of money in his application. These scandals lost Ghalibaf substantial support in his district, but he was returned to parliament nonetheless. Despite the Paydari Front taking a majority in the Majles, Ghalibaf was reelected speaker with Khamenei’s backing in May.

Just days before Ghalibaf was reelected as speaker, Raisi died unexpectedly in a helicopter crash. A presidential election was set for June 28 to replace Raisi. Ghalibaf registered as a candidate and was considered a frontrunner. As in 2013 he again faced Jalili and several other conservatives, but only one candidate for the reformist and moderate camps. Unlike in 2013, which saw high turnout of about 73 percent, turnout in the election was mitigated by widespread voter apathy and saw less than 40 percent of registered voters cast a ballot. Nonetheless, in the first round of voting, the reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won the plurality of the vote (more than 42 percent), and Jalili came in second place (more than 38 percent), sending Pezeshkian and Jalili to a second round of voting. Ghalibaf came in a distant third place, winning less than 14 percent of the vote.

Personal life

Ghalibaf is a relative of the wife of Ali Khamenei, and he is reportedly close to Khamenei, his wife, and his son Mojtaba. In 1982 he married Zahra Sadat Moshir, who later became a lecturer of social science and is known for her initiatives to balance the advancement of women with Islamic traditions during Ghalibaf’s time as mayor. Their marriage ceremony was officiated by Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini (1979–89). They have three children, Elias, Eshagh, and Maryam.