Background
Karbaschi was trained as a cleric in the holy city of Qom and spent time in Evin prison for his political activities before the Islamic Revolution. He has a degree in architecture and in civil engineering earned in Italy.
Karbaschi was a driving force for many new modernization efforts. As the Mayor of Tehran he was known for having bulldozed apartment buildings and office buildings built without city approval, removed revolutionary graffiti from walls, planted thousands of trees, banned much of the private traffic in central Tehran and opened more than a hundred parks. Karbaschi also angering bazaar merchants by raising taxes and contributing to the city's soaring real estate prices, earning him the reputation during his time as mayor of "the most loved and hated man in Tehran." He started the first Iranian full colour newspaper, Hamshahri, while mayor.
Karbaschi was one of the key supporters of President Mohammad Khatami's first presidential election campaign which lead to Khatami's landslide victory (1997). After Mohammad Khatami's victory, a power struggle started within the political establishment of Iran between the reformists and conservatives of the Iranian government. Karbaschi's arrest in April 1998 prompted thousands of student demonstrators to clash with riot police, and the Interior Minister (who was later arrested for sacrilege) to complain that he had not been informed of the arrest despite that fact that Karbaschi was a member of the president's cabinet in addition to being mayor of Iran's capital and largest city.
Read more about this topic: Gholamhossein Karbaschi
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