Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf Elected as the Speaker of the Twelfth Term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly

On Tuesday, June 8, representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly elected Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as the Speaker for one year. The second session of the twelfth term of the Assembly began with the presence of 287 representatives and the temporary presidency of Aladdin Boroujerdi. Qalibaf was re-elected as Speaker with 198 votes in the permanent board elections, while his competitors, Manouchehr Mottaki and Mojtaba Zolnouri, received five and 60 votes, respectively. The number of invalid votes was reported to be 24. Qalibaf initially became Speaker in the first and second sessions of the eleventh term with 230 votes, but his votes began to decline from the third session, reaching 194 votes. In the fourth session, he managed to increase his votes slightly to 210, but in this new term, he saw a significant decrease compared to the previous term. According to Iranian news agencies, Hamidreza Hajibabaei and Ali Nikzad were elected as the first and second vice presidents of the Assembly with 175 and 169 votes, respectively. Abdulreza Misri with 115 votes, Hajji Deligani with 96 votes, Hamid Rasai with 35 votes, and Mousa Ghazanfari Abadi with 16 votes could not achieve the vice presidency from the total of 287 votes. The Assembly's board is elected for a one-year term, and according to the internal regulations of this institution, there is no legal prohibition on repeating the members of the board. The board consists of a president, two vice presidents, six secretaries, and three supervisors. The Speaker, who is the head of the board, is responsible for managing the Assembly, and in case of absence, the first and second vice presidents take over this position sequentially. Qalibaf's success today came amid rumors of his reluctance to run for the presidency of the Assembly, especially since most of the seats in this term were won by hardline conservatives. This news was serious enough that the Khabaronline website reported in recent days that Qalibaf was transferring his office to the courtyard of the Assembly. However, after the death of Ebrahim Raisi and his entourage in a helicopter crash and the necessity for early presidential elections, Qalibaf announced that he would also run in this term of the Assembly. He had previously served as Speaker of the eleventh term and has run for the presidency several times, each time unsuccessfully. It seems that his candidacy for the Speaker position again was sanctioned by Ali Khamenei. Besides Qalibaf, Mojtaba Zolnouri and Manouchehr Mottaki also announced their candidacies for the twelfth Assembly presidency. Zolnouri, Qalibaf's main rival, is a hardline conservative figure close to the Revolutionary Guards and is known as an opponent of the JCPOA. Mottaki was Iran's foreign minister during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency. Qalibaf was initially recognized more as a military figure with a background in the police force, the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, and the Air Force of the Revolutionary Guards. He later became the mayor of Tehran and was elected to the Assembly as a representative from Tehran. Qalibaf's name is associated with significant corruption cases in the Islamic Republic. From 2016 to 2023, he has been mentioned in cases such as astronomical real estate, paying a bribe of 65 million tomans to prevent investigations into the municipality in the tenth Assembly, withdrawing 1.25 billion tomans for elections through the signing of two contracts, and a debt of about 50 trillion tomans owed by the municipality, which is several times the current budget of this organization. Additionally, his wife Zahra Moshirolestekhara has been mentioned in cases of misconduct in the Imam Reza charity, setting up a currency exchange with her brother in Turkey, and their son Elias has been involved in issues such as a 22,000 square meter garden in Tehran and luxury schools owned by him on Kish Island. Another son, Ishaq, has been linked to multiple trips to European countries and requests for residency from the Canadian government. One of the most controversial cases involving Qalibaf's wife and daughter, Maryam, which caused an uproar in Persian-speaking social media, was the so-called 'Sismoni Gate' case, where they traveled to Turkey to buy baby supplies amid Iran's economic crisis.