Hardline factions in Iran recently forced out Iran’s economy minister and vice president for strategic affairs in another dramatic illustration of the enduring power of groups opposed to Iranian rapprochement with the West.
In Iran, all centers of power are concentrated in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader since 1989. Those who demonstrate loyalty to his leadership are permitted despite lack of public support to criticize elected governments of opposing political factions, exert influence on Iran’s domestic and foreign policies and personally profit from ties to the state.
Among those who retain influence within the Islamic Republic is Saeed Jalili, a three-time loser in presidential politics.
A veteran who was wounded in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Jalili has held positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Leader’s Office and also served for six years as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the highest body regulating security decision-making and implementation. During that time, from 2007 to 2013, while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president, Jalili also served as Iran’s top negotiator on nuclear matters with world powers but failed to make progress toward an agreement or to prevent the UN Security Council from passing several resolutions against Iran.
Iran achieved a nuclear accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2015 only after Jalili and Ahmadinejad left office and under the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, himself a former nuclear negotiator under the Khatami administration. Jalili formed a sort of shadow government during Rouhani’s two presidential terms that included about 20 working groups that sought to influence government policy and undermine Rouhani.
Jalili and his supporters were prominent in efforts to block legislation complying with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based organization that seeks to stop money laundering and terrorism financing. Following conclusion of the JCPOA, the Rouhani administration hoped to remove Iran from a FATF blacklist to encourage foreign investment in the Iranian economy and gain additional sanctions relief. Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a candidate for president in 2024 elections, revealed in a televised debate that Jalili had told him that concessions to FATF could only come under a hardline government “but if they [Rouhani’s administration] are responsible, we do not accept it.”
Following U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA under the first Trump administration, Jalili lobbied Khamenei to also quit the deal. In January 2022, he wrote a letter to Khamenei, asking him to withdraw from the 2015 accord and to increase the level of uranium enrichment in Iran to 90 percent or weapons grade. Iran had already increased the level to 60 percent in 2021 following Israeli sabotage at its main enrichment facility at Natanz. Jalili’s lobbying occurred while Iran was engaged in diplomatic efforts to revive the JCPOA. Those efforts failed for a variety of reasons including new Russian interference following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Efforts to negotiate a new deal remain uncertain. On March 2, Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister who negotiated the JCPOA, stepped down as vice president for strategic affairs under pressure from Iranian conservatives who consider him too close to the West.
Zarif was appointed by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist who won election last summer after the death of his hardline predecessor in a helicopter crash. Pezeshkian has never been a particularly strong figure; his minister of economy was impeached by parliament on the same day Zarif resigned, blamed for Iran’s depreciating currency and other economic woes.
Reformist political parties in the Islamic Republic of Iran tend to be weak because the regime fears they could become anti-regime instruments of civil society. This is not the case for hardline groups even when their candidates are repeatedly rejected for elected office. One example is the Steadfast Front (Jebhe-ye Paydari), which was led for many years by the late Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, known for his anti-democratic views.
The Jebhe-ye Paydari defends so-called revolutionary values and seeks implementation of conservative cultural policies including restrictions on the media and the arts. For example, the group has promoted an “Internet Protection Bill” which would severely restrict Iranian access to the global Internet. The bill has been temporarily shelved due to widespread criticism. But this occurred only after the Steadfast Front lobbied hard for its passage. The bill was submitted to a parliamentary committee in 2021 under an article that permits committees to enact laws in “urgent” cases. At the time, Morteza Agha-Tehrani, former secretary general of the Steadfast Front, was head of the committee. He said in a speech during the review of the bill, “They insulted me 20,000 times and created 120,000 pages against us because of this bill, but even if 100 billion pages were created against us, we would still do our job because we believe in the path we are taking.”
Many clerics who function as ideologues for the system are also involved in corruption, a chronic problem in Iran.
Kazem Seddiqi was appointed by Khamenei to serve as the temporary Friday prayer leader in Tehran, a position of considerable influence as the weekly sermons are broadcast on Iranian radio and television. Seddiqi is also in charge of the Khomeini Seminary, a school for training clerics. A private company recently took control of a large garden at the seminary in one of the poshest areas of north Tehran. Seddiqi and several of his sons and friends own the company and the imam’s daughter-in-law is the company’s inspector. Even after the transaction was exposed, no action was taken against Seddiqi.
Another case involves Mehdi Khamoshi, appointed by Khamenei as head of the Endowments and Charity Affairs Organization in 2018. In 2023, Iranian journalists revealed that a 150-hectare property in the city of Qazvin that includes a farm with 1,000 cattle was leased to Mona Chaychian, Khamoshi’s daughter-in-law, for a monthly rent of 10 million rials (about $11). Khamoshi is still in his position and the land remains in his family’s hands.
Nepotism is another prominent feature of Iran’s informal networks. Bloomberg has reported on the family of Ali Shamkhani, a former national security advisor and former defense minister who is still close to Khamenei. According to the news agency, Shamkhani’s son, Hossein, established a company in Dubai called Milavous that has gained extensive influence in global energy markets and is involved in both Iranian and Russian oil transactions that circumvent sanctions.
Informal networks are not an invention of the Islamic Republic; they also existed under the monarchy that was overthrown in 1979. But they have penetrated the nation’s power centers so deeply over the past 46 years that they will be hard to dislodge even after the supreme leader dies.
Dr. Mohammad Salami is a research associate at International Institute for Global Strategic Analysis (IIGSA). His areas of expertise include politics and governance, security, and counterterrorism in the Middle East and especially the Persian Gulf region. @moh_salami