Iran’s President-elect set to meet hard-line allies

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jun. 30 – Iran’s newly-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will jointly meet with four of the failed hard-line presidential hopefuls this evening where they are expected to reach an agreement over senior cabinet posts. Ahmadinejad, himself an ultra-conservative who is set to take office on August 4, will meet with Ahmad Tavakkoli, Mohsen Rezai, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, and Ali Larijani. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jun. 30 – Iran’s newly-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will jointly meet with four of the failed hard-line presidential hopefuls this evening where they are expected to reach an agreement over senior cabinet posts.

Ahmadinejad, himself an ultra-conservative who is set to take office on August 4, will meet with Ahmad Tavakkoli, Mohsen Rezai, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, and Ali Larijani.

Knowledgeable sources close to the conservative camp told Iran Focus yesterday that they expect major reshuffles in the government.

All four of the hardliners have pledged to support Ahmadinejad in office.

Rezai is currently the secretary general of the State Expediency Council and is widely tipped to receive an important portfolio in the incoming administration of President-elect Ahmadinejad. He was one of the eight candidates allowed to run for President though he withdrew later on. As Commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) from 1981 to 1997, Rezai was involved both in repression of the Iranian people and was also tasked with exporting the Islamic Republic’s domination throughout the Middle East.

Qalibaf was a former commander of the IRGC Air Force but stepping down in 2000 to become chief of the paramilitary police force, the State Security Forces.

Larijani, another top commander of the IRGC, was appointed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as his representative in the Supreme National Security Council for a three-year term. For a decade, until 2004, he headed Iranian State Television and Radio.

Tavakkoli, a Majlis deputy from Tehran, is an ultra-conservative member of parliament who was ex-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s rival in the 1993 presidential elections. He has been the ultra-conservative camp’s chief economic critic of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami’s government.

Tavakkoli along with Elias Naderan and Hassan Sobhani, two other Majlis deputies who were also members of his campaign team, were among those who have been promised cabinet posts in the ministries of trade, economy, and management, according to one source.