Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi - Political Activity

Political Activity

In 1997, after the election of reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, Mesbah Yazdi encouraged Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbolli to put a stop to the reform agitation by any means, including violence. After decline of the reform movement in 2003, his supporters made gains in local and parliamentary elections. In 2005, Mesbah Yazdi supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential bid and subsequently gained "direct influence" in the Iranian government through the appointment of loyal supporters "to high posts" after Ahmadinejad's victory. By 2011, however he was sharply critical of Ahmadinejad saying that he was behaving “unnaturally” and needed to be “saved.” After Ahmadinejad fired intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi without consulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Mesbah-Yazdi stated, "That a human being would behave in a way that angers his closest friends and allies and turns them into opponents is not logical for any politician."

According to some sources, Mesbah-Yazdi is rumored to have ambitions to succeed Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader." Some clerics and some newspapers feared Mesbah-Yazdi was trying to expand his already growing power by "packing" the Assembly of Experts with "loyalists." In October 2006, an acolyte of Mesbah-Yazdi, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, was appointed head of the election commission, supervisor of the poll for the Assembly of Experts, and many of the candidates in the 2006 Assembly of Experts elections were Mesbah-Yazdi loyalists (though they ran as independent candidates to avoid revealing their affiliation to Mesbah Yazdi). However, his group failed to achieve a majority in that election, leaving the assembly in the hands of pragmatic-conservatives. Mesbah-Yazdi himself won a seat but finished only in sixth-place in Tehran municipality where he ran, and now heads the minority ultraconservative faction in the assembly

He has been named by investigative journalist Akbar Ganji as "having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders" for the 1998 Chain murders of Iran assassinations of five Iranian dissidents.