While government supporters in Iran have criticized key ultraconservative figure Saeed Jalili for his controversial actions in recent years, a new ultraconservative clerical party has emerged in the country in recent weeks.
Media speculation suggests that the formation of this new party, along with its clerical base, is aimed at participating in the next Assembly of Experts election—a clerical body responsible for selecting Khamenei’s successor. Given that senior ayatollahs at the Qom Seminary are unfamiliar with its members, the party is likely composed of younger clerics born in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ultra-conservatives already hold the lion’s share of power in the Islamic Republic, with many Reformist politicians and commentators blaming them for the deadlock with the United States and the nation’s ongoing economic crisis.
Several reports in pro-reform and pro-government media have already targeted Saeed Jalili, last year’s runner-up in the presidential race and a key figure linked to the radical Paydari Party, accusing him of hindering the country’s development and undermining efforts to lift US and international sanctions.
Those reports, particularly one published by the moderate conservative Khabar Online website, accused Jalili of sabotaging four potential foreign policy initiatives that, according to the outlet, could have resolved Tehran’s diplomatic deadlock and opened the path to lifting sanctions.
Those cases included torpedoing an oil contract with foreign entities and depriving Iran of billions of dollars in profit more than two decades ago, opposing the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, known as the JCPOA, under the Rouhani administration, preventing the negotiations to revive the JCPOA under the Raisi administration, and preventing the Iranian parliament and the Expediency Council to approve the four bills that would facilitate Iran’s foreign trade and international banking, mandated by the international watchdog, the Financial Action Task force (FATF).
According to the website, Jalili, who operates a shadow government, has established his own network alongside the Paydari Party to advance his “obstruction campaign.” The report, echoed by other Iranian media outlets, also accused Jalili’s allies in Parliament of actively blocking initiatives aimed at improving Iran’s relations with the West.
Over the years, under Presidents Rouhani, Raisi, and more recently President Pezeshkian, numerous moderate politicians, including former Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, have unsuccessfully attempted to engage Saeed Jalili in a debate over what they describe as his “destructive performance,” particularly during his tenure as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As if Jalili’s and the Paydari Party’s opposition to the government weren’t already significant, a new ultraconservative clerical party is taking shape in Iran, led by previously low-profile figures who are even more hardline than Jalili.
Seyyed Mohammad Aghamiri, born in 1975, a member of the Tehran City Council and a close associate of Tehran’s hardline Mayor Alireza Zakani, along with Morteza Esteghamat, a member of the Mashhad City Council closely aligned with the city’s firebrand Friday Prayers Imam Ahmad Alamolhoda, have so far emerged as the public faces of a new party reportedly composed of “male and female clerics,” whose identities remain undisclosed.
The Islamic Republic currently permits two main clerical political parties: the left-wing “Militant Clerics Association,” which includes figures such as former President Mohammad Khatami, Expediency Council member Majid Ansari, and Mohammad Ali Abtahi, and the right-wing “Militant Clerics Society,” whose members include Ahmad Alamolhoda and other hardliners like Seyyed Reza Akrami and Seyyed Reza Taqavi. Over the past 46 years, the right-wing party has maintained dominance over Iran’s unelected institutions. Collectively, leading members of both parties have played pivotal roles in shaping nearly every significant event in Iran over the past four decades.
While most members of the two established clerical parties are seminarians, Qom Seminary teachers have told Tehran-based media that they are unfamiliar with any of the members of the emerging party. Five senior ayatollahs at the seminary, including Hosseini Bushehri, stated they had no knowledge of the “19 male and female clerics” reportedly leading the new party, which identifies itself as “The Society of Revolutionary Clerics.”