Editor’s Note: While the Stimson Center rarely publishes anonymous work, the author of this commentary is a Tehran-based analyst who has requested anonymity out of legitimate concern for their personal safety. The writer is known to appropriate staff, has a track record of reliable analysis, and is in a position to provide an otherwise unavailable perspective.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives
Iran’s Council of Guardians again disqualified Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker, nuclear negotiator, and regime stalwart, from running in Iran’s June 28 presidential elections.
The decision, by a body controlled by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had to do with more than just who replaces President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.
Larijani’s disqualification put a punctuation point on the fall from grace of his entire family, once one of the most influential in the Islamic Republic. The Larijanis, like the Hashemi-Rafsanjanis and the Khomeinis before them, are now marginalized in the Islamic Republic’s exclusionary politics.
Larijani’s elder brother Sadegh Larijani, once considered a contender to succeed Khamenei for the regime’s top job, was a member of the Guardian Council but resigned in 2021 when Ali was first barred from running for president. Three other Larijani brothers have also lost their political status in the past three years: Mohammad Javad was once a deputy in the powerful judiciary branch; Mohammad Bagher, a medical doctor, was a deputy health minister and Fazel used to be a top diplomat.
The saga shows how people can rise in Iran’s political arena because of familial links and fall when those links are no longer relevant in the current political setting.
Ali Larijani was born in 1958 in Najaf, Iraq, to Iranian parents. His family is a Shi’ite religious gentry based in Amol, in Mazandaran province along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. His father moved to Najaf in 1931 because of pressures from the then monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi against Shi’ite clergy but returned to Iran in 1961.
At 20, Ali Larijani married the daughter of another influential cleric, Morteza Motahari, an ideologue of the Islamic Republic who was assassinated soon after the 1979 Revolution. The marriage helped him start his political life.
Over the years, Larijani tended to align with people in power and, despite his own marginalization, helped exclude and isolate others.
Larijani’s first important post was in the state radio and TV broadcasting organization, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Larijani was a member of its caretaker council, responsible for policymaking and appointing the IRIB director. The then-director Mohammad Hashemi, a younger brother of future president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was dismissed, Hashemi asserts, because of pressure from Larijani.
The caretaker council subsequently appointed Larijani as director of IRIB’s central news office, a post he held for a year before joining the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war. He had several deputy ministerial posts in the 1982-1992 period and was appointed minister of culture by then President Rafsanjani in 1993 to replace the more mild-mannered and tolerant minister and later reformist president Mohammad Khatami. Khatami resigned under pressure from hardliners and his letter of resignation is considered a historic document in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Larijani stayed as IRIB director until 2007. During his tenure, the channel launched extensive attacks against Khatami’s reformist administration and other intellectuals and thinkers, with programs such as “The Identity” and “The Light.”
In “The Identity” program, famous Iranian intellectuals, writers, and researchers were referred to as “cultural invaders” and “cultural traitors.” In November 1996, Larijani personally launched an attack on these writers and intellectuals, accusing them of having connections with foreign countries. “Do these gentlemen think we don’t know which embassy is giving them money to write this or that article?” he said. “Do they think we know and say nothing? Of course, we didn’t do anything and remained silent. However, they pushed things to a point where we had to speak up.”
By proving his unconditional allegiance to Khamenei, Larijani was rewarded with an even more sensitive position as the Supreme Leader’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, an important decision-making body. Less than two months later, Larijani became secretary of the council, equal to national security advisor in other countries, and in charge of nuclear negotiations with the West.
Larijani took over the Iranian nuclear file during a tough period. An agreement reached with European negotiators by his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, fell apart after the 2005 election of hardliner president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Larijani criticized the agreement and remarked on the imbalance between what Iran had given and what Iran was offered, saying “We gave a precious pearl and received a lollipop in return.”
However, Larijani decided to engage in nuclear talks with Javier Solana, the then-foreign policy chief of the European Union. Talks between Larijani and Solana were going well, but Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and an acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program to enrich small quantities of uranium undermined the negotiations. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear watchdog, referred Iran’s file to the UN Security Council in early 2006 and the first U.N. sanctions against Iran followed that summer.
Javad Zarif, later Iran’s Foreign Minister, said in a leaked interview that “the night before the resolution against Iran was passed in the Security Council, I told Mr. Larijani that the situation is not good and a resolution against Iran will be issued in the Security Council, but he thought that Russia would not allow this and will veto the resolution.” Contrary to Larijani’s expectations, not only did Russia not veto Resolution 1696; it passed with 14 votes in favor and only one against, by Qatar.
Two other Security Council resolutions were passed against Iran in December 2006 and in April 2007. Larijani stepped down in October 2007 after Ahmadinejad interfered in efforts to reach a tentative deal with the then George W. Bush administration. Larijani ran for parliament from the theological center of Qom, was elected, and became speaker, a post he held until 2020.
In addition to Larijani’s marginalization in the past few years, former president Rafsanjani, once a major power broker in Iran, died in 2017, and his daughter, Faezeh, and son, Mehdi, have both spent time in jail. Ex-president Rouhani, who succeeded where Larijani failed in negotiating a nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was disqualified from running for the Assembly of Experts, the body nominally charged with choosing the next Supreme Leader. Bagher Larijani was expelled from the Council of Guardians and lost elections in 2024 for the Assembly of Experts. All these developments benefited Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba, a leading contender to replace Khamenei, especially after Raisi’s demise.
In an effort to combat fast-rising hardline supporters of Mojtaba, Larijani allied himself more and more with the reformist and the moderate camps he had once scorned and persecuted. In his final speech in the parliament, he pointedly complained of the “injustice” done to him.
It is likely that one reason Larijani was prevented from running for president after Raisi’s death was to squelch any chance that his brother Bagher might become a contender to replace Khamenei. In his four decades of political life, Larijani moved from one camp to another to show his loyalty to the regime. In doing so, he did not hesitate to remove competitors from power. Thus, it was no surprise that no one raised his voice to protest Larijani’s latest disqualification. Now, all he has left is membership in a body called the Expediency Council. Larijani knows that he will lose this post as well if he raises his voice again against Khamenei.