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The Fight between Iran's Neoconservatives and Conservatives

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Hossein Bastani, member of editorial board, Rooz, Iranian news website
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

June 19, 2008

Hossein Bastani, an Iranian journalist, was secretary of the Association of Iranian Journalists during the presidency of the predecessor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and now lives in Paris. He says there is a continuing fight in Iran between the so-called neoconservatives, who support Ahmadinejad, and the more traditional conservatives, who support the older generation of leaders. Recent allegations of corruption in the upper levels of the Iranian state made by an Ahmadinejad supporter are a manifestation of this conflict, Bastani says. At the moment, the neoconservatives seem to have the support of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but if he switches support to the conservatives, it will be difficult for Ahmadinejad to win reelection in 2009.

Your newspaper, Rooz, and other Iranian exiles have been discussing the revelations made by Abbas Palizdar about corruption in high places in the Iranian state. Who is he, and what has he said? And why would he do it?

Abbas Palizadar’s revelations were covered not only by Persian-language media outside the country, but also by many Iran-based websites; even a few newspapers inside the country published his remarks without naming those incriminated by him.

Palizdar was for some time the operational secretary of the Iranian parliament's Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee, but he has never been a member of parliament, as many news sites have claimed. In the seventh Majlis [Iran’s parliament], he headed the Infrastructure Research Bureau, and was the adviser to the Majlis Economic Committee, as well. He was also the chairman and spokesperson of the Board of Trustees of the House of Industrialists of Iran, and a pro-Ahmadinejad candidate for the position of Tehran’s city council, but he was not elected.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.