Iran Focus
Having served as a hard-line speaker for the past two years and being the sole candidate put forward for the post, Larijani was voted in by 214 of 258 members of parliament present with a further 44 abstentions.
Ali Ardeshir Larijani, born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1958, is seen by many as a staunch supporter of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, rising through its ranks to become a leader of the group’s militant core and emerging as a principal amongst Iran’s leadership.
As Deputy Minister of Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, Larijani was directly involved in the sponsorship of terrorist activities by Iran’s surrogates in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
Larijani served as the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance under President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani taking up the post from Mohammad Khatami.
After serving as director-general of the state-run Islamic Republic Broadcasting Corporation (State TV and Radio) from 1994 to 2004, Larijani sat as Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal representative in the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).
In 2005, Larijani took over as Secretary-General of the SNSC and became the chief nuclear negotiator in discussion over Iran’s nuclear program which involved then-European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana and the EU troika.
In May 2008, he became Majlis Speaker.
His brother, Sadegh Larijani, is a cleric who is Iran’s Judiciary Chief. Another brother, Mohammad-Javad, is regarded as a top ideologue of the Khamenei faction.
Alongside Ali Larijani, former Second Vice Speaker Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard was on Wednesday re-elected as first Vice Speaker with 188 of the votes and Shahabeddin Sadr was re-elected as Second Vice Speaker with 145 votes.
Shahabeddin Sadr has served as spokesman for Iran’s hard-line Conservative coalition in Parliament, a group which prefers to call itself the “Principalists” to underline their loyalty to the Iran’s Supreme Leader.
