Published by the Atlantic Council
According to an old dictum, the best leaders are those who don’t ask for the job. By such logic, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the fifty-eight-year-old who became the new speaker of the Iranian parliament on May 28, is not very qualified. The conservative soldier-cum-politician has never hidden his ambitions for power. His ascendancy to the top legislative position in the country comes after three failed runs for the presidency in 2005, 2013, and 2017.
In the complex structures of the Islamic Republic, the vast majority of power is constitutionally bestowed upon the country’s Supreme Leader, which is currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also the commander-in-chief and whose appointees vet candidates for all elections except those for local councils. But the three men heading the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government still wield much power. The speaker of the parliament is a major political figure who controls his own budget and institutions and has his own diplomatic profile. The wily Qalibaf is expected to use his position even more forcefully than his predecessors and to usher in a transition away from the failed pro-reform presidency of Hassan Rouhani to a new conservative and hardline-dominated era for the Islamic Republic.
The new man of power in Iran’s parliament