Qalibaf the monster

Over the last few days, the name of Muhammad Baqr Qalibaf, the former mayor of Tehran, keeps bubbling up as some sort of “Delcy Rodriguez” type figure, namely a relatively “moderate” regime figure with whom we might be able to do business were the government to fall to his control. Moreover, there are voices in Iran itself maneuvering to install Qalibaf instead of Mojtada Khamenei, son of the late, Ali Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader.

This is a dangerous proposition that will make things worse for the United States, to say nothing of Iran and other affected countries. Venezuela is nothing like Iran. And for all her evils, Delcy Rodriguez, successor to Venezuelan cartel leader Nicolas Maduro, is practically benign compared to Qalibaf.

On the surface, the more pragmatic-looking Qalibaf, whose name is also transliterated as Ghalibaf, seems a more palatable alternative to unhinged, aggressivene Mojtada. Some see him as a technocrat-reformer. The city of London once feted him. Establishment outlets like Foreign Policy journal and PBS called Qalibaf a “pragmatic conservative.” He’s a man likes to negotiate deals.

The truth is the opposite: Qalibaf, lately speaker of the Islamic Republic parliament, is among Iran’s most violent and cruel leaders. He says he still seeks “completion of the chain of revenge” for President Donald Trump’s 2020 elimination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) chief Qassem Soleimani.

The IRGC is the fanatically ideological state security apparatus of the regime. It is the chief enforcement arm of the Shi’ite Khomenist revolution. Its elite Qods Force serves as the regime’s principal arm to coordinate international terrorism. The IRGC trained and equipped Iraqi jihadists with sophisticated roadside bombs that killed more than 600 American troops in Iraq. The Biden Department of Justice found it directed a cell in the United States that sought to assassinate President-Elect Trump in 2020.

Qalibaf is part of that narrow IRGC clique. He was the advocate of many of the most horrific waves of repression inside Iran. He has pursued with unflagging resolve an apocalyptic determination to defeat Iran’s opponents, including the West.

Who is Muhammad Baqr Qalibaf

In the early part of the 2000s, Qalibaf was made mayor of Tehran. Many in the West heralded him as an effective man committed to reform politics in his city. He was feted officially by such cities as London, which made him an honorary citizen in 2008. Hopes in 2005 ran high among wishful thinkers that he might then be elected president as a sign that Iran was indeed squarely on the road to reform.

This understanding of Qalibaf could not be more off the mark.

The very fact that he was installed in the highly prestigious post of mayor in Tehran at a period when the Iranian revolutionary regime was shifting toward a much more aggressive and extreme position across the board should have raised alarm about Qalibaf.

Qalibaf was no stealth candidate who views or proclivities remained hidden among the clouds. All presidential candidates required the approval of the Supreme Leader who at the time, and until a few days ago, was Khamenei. Indeed, a synopsis of Qalibaf’s public career bears out exactly what he stands for and what can be expected:

Head of the IRGC’s reserve force, the Basijis

• As head of Iran’s Basiji corps – the reservist wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps – from 1980 to 1988, Qalibaf was the figure ultimately responsible for one of the darkest chapters of the Iranian revolution: the decision to use children, many not yet even in their teens, as human fodder to clear minefields and human wave assaults during the Iran-Iraq war. As well as being one of history’s most egregious cases of mass child abuse and wonton disregard for life, this violation of the Geneva Conventions (employing underaged children in war) is also likely a prosecutable war crime. As many as 100,000 Basijis, armed only with plastic keys, were killed in these mine-clearing and human wave attacks.

Command of the IRGC Air Force ([DATE?]-June 2000)

• In July 1999, as students were beginning demonstrations in various places in Iran, then Brigadier General Qalibaf joined 23 other IRGC officers to issue a written warning to the less extreme President Khatami that he must immediately “use every available means” to crush a nationwide protest movement led by pro-democracy students, or “they would take matters into their own hands,” all but directly threatening a coup. The next week, the demonstrations were indeed crushed with unusual brutality.

Qalibaf as Iran’s national police chief (June 2000- October 2005)

• As Qalibaf was commander of the nation’s Law Enforcement Force in 2000, Iran’s parliament sharply criticized him for continuing to use Basiji forces alongside police in the Lorestan province to crush student meetings with the highly respected reformist cleric, Abdokarim Sorush.

• Iran’s parliament in late 2002 became so concerned over the sort of repressive means used against students and journalists that it sent a parliamentary delegation to implore Qalibaf to back off.

• As head of Iran’s police force, Qalibaf in 2002 defined the mission as protecting Iranian society from such “current problems as deviations from social mores, disorders and chaos” and his deputy as an effort to “mobilize all its efforts to fight against the social corruption.”

• Iran’s parliament investigated and called in Qalibaf in for questioning under suspicion that the police under his command carried out the star-chamber-like cleansing of the northern Iranian city of Mashaad of prostitutes, during which 12 women were murdered.

• Qalibaf is believed to have been behind the murders of key journalists in 2002 and 2003.

• While some reform papers at the time did commend Qalibaf for distancing the police from some of its most politicized actions, the same reformist outlets complained of an intensifying campaign of arrest and interrogation by Iran’s police, not only of students, but also journalists throughout 2002.

• He was the unrivaled driving force crushing the Student Revolt of 2003.

• Iranian papers ran journalists’ complaints that Qalibaf carried his restrictive policies against journalists from his command of the police into the mayor’s office when he governed Tehran in 2003, prompting one reformist journal to write: “The conservatives used to say in their slogans that the disciplinary force should act under the supervision of the municipality; however, now that Qalibaf has become the mayor, we are witnessing in practice the fact that the power of the disciplinary force in the administration of the city of Tehran will be increased.”

• The legacy of Qalibaf’s term as head of Iran’s police was that the Basiji received new powers in their function as an unofficial division of the police – a trend against which even Iran’s parliament repeatedly warned between 2000 and 2005. An example occurred in February 2006, when the Basiji attacked the leader of the bus drivers’ union, Massoud Osanlou, a scandal in which some factions in parliament again feared might involve Qalibaf as mayor of Tehran. The Basiji assailants held Osanlou prisoner in Qalibaf’s apartment. They cut off the tip of his tongue in order to convince him to keep quiet, but no Basiji was arrested, questioned or detained.

• In December 2006, the City of Tehran, with Qalibaf as mayor, hosted the “Tehran International Conference: Examining the myth of the Holocaust.”

On the nuclear file

• Qalibaf in a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Yabo Naka on 17 October, 2008 criticized the West’s double-standard policy toward Iran’s nuclear activities. He emphasized that Iran had fulfilled all its commitments based on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and all its nuclear activities were done under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Qalibaf said, “Iran even suspended its nuclear enrichment programs for two years but as the Westerners did not keep their promises, Tehran reached the conclusion that the dual approach of the West will frustrate these attempts at building trust.”

• While Qalibaf favored a some points talks on an incentives package offered by world powers, Qalibaf told Iranian papers that there is “little chance of Iran conceding on [the West’s] demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.” When asked if Iran could suspend enrichment without giving up mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle so that negotiations on the package could begin, Qalibaf said, “It’s unlikely.”

In short, Qalibaf has a long history of having not only been involved, but in charge of, some of the regimes’ most repressive and aggressive structures and policies. He has been the instigator, not just implementer, of lurches toward greater repression. And he has been a key figure in steeling the Islamic Republic’s resolve to never concede on its nuclear weapons ambitions.