Some hardliner candidates from Iran’s recent presidential election, along with a key commentator who aided their parliamentary victory, are facing pressure from fellow conservatives to exit the political scene.
The main reason for the pressures is yet to be known, although those who exert these pressures have offered enough arguments to back their initiative.
Presidential candidate Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran has come under attack by the city councilors for leaving the city at the mercy of profiteers. They accuse him of allowing high municipal positions to be sold to those willing to pay hefty bribes for lucrative jobs in local councils around Tehran.
His main critic enjoys a special position that cannot be ignored. She is Narjess Soleimani, the daughter of former IRGC Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani who has left his legacy of reverence and influence to his children within the Islamic Republic’s political establishment. However, Ms. Soleimani is not alone in her campaign against Zakani. Some seven of Tehran's councilors are said to be backing a motion to unseat Zakani.
Another former candidate under fire is ultraconservative Saeed Jalili who appears to be losing his influence among Iran's conservatives after his defeat by President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian. The main argument brought against him is about his lack of transparency about the funding of his self-declared shadow government and the hefty sums his campaign spent.
Several politicians, including former President Hassan Rouhani and former Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who was also a presidential candidate, have recently disclosed that Saeed Jalili obstructed Iran's negotiations with the United States and blocked the country's joining the FATF conventions for personal political gain. Jalili did this in his role as the secretary of the influential Supreme Council of National Security.
Both Rouhani and Pourmohammadi have said that everyone else at the Security Council was in favor of the negotiations that were close to be finalized in a bid to reduce the pressure of sanctions on Iran. Pourmohammadi added that Jalili told him he would have endorsed the FATF membership motion if someone other than Rouhani was the President at the time.
The FATF is an international financial watchdog that spearheads efforts to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and the financing of weapons proliferation. In recent years, Iran has been placed on the financial watchdog’s “blacklist” due to its failure to adhere to transparency standards and international conventions against money laundering and terrorism financing.
Saeed Jalili's resistance to adopting the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations had emerged as a pivotal topic in the sudden presidential election debates in Iran.
For more than a decade, the debate over FATF compliance, intertwined with the persistent challenge of international sanctions, has dominated Iran's foreign relations discourse.
In an interview with Khabar Online, conservative politician Mahmoud Naqavi Hosseini called on Jalili to make transparent the budget of his shadow government and its source of income. He said that the shadow government's name has not been mentioned anywhere in the country's annual budget bill.Naqavi Hosseini said that Jalili should begin to move out of the shadow and come under the spotlight.
During the election, Jalili claimed his campaign was funded by the people but provided no evidence to support this. Other politicians, including former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi and conservative Hossein Mozaffar, questioned Jalili's integrity, accusing him and the "shadow government" of undermining previous administrations.
Additionally, conservatives released a video in which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seemingly opposed the formation of a parallel body to the seated government. Former MP Gholamali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi warned that Jalili's shadow government could create problems for Iran's new administration under Pezeshkian, describing Jalili as a rude individual who persists in his shadow government activities despite Khamenei's remarks.
Ideological propagandist Ali Akbar Raefipour who leads the ultraconservative group Masaf [Combat] and groomed several hardliners, as well as helped win the parliamentary election in March has also been in trouble during recent weeks over lack transparency about hefty donations he claims to have received. Reports in Tehran say he has disbanded the group.
As the weakest link in the ultraconservative circle, he is facing dangerous allegations about portraying the Shiites's first imam, Imam Ali, in a bad light in a video that has gone viral on social media. He is said to be also facing a travel ban and probably an indictment.
Rumors have it that Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is at least behind the attacks on Raefipour. However, a higher authority, such as Khamenei's office or the Judiciary, might have decided that the trio have gone too far in their slogans and ambitions and that they need to be stopped before they put themselves and others in more trouble.