PARIS: Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and a veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, has emerged as the highest-profile political figure in the Islamic republic after the killing of its leaders.
A pillar of the Iranian establishment for some three decades and one of the Islamic republic’s most prominent non-clerical figures, Ghalibaf, 64, now appears to be playing a key role spearheading the war effort.
Whereas the son and successor of slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not appeared in public and has issued just three written statements, Ghalibaf has been unleashing regular posts on X and giving multiple interviews.
“We are in an unequal war, with an asymmetrical set-up, we must do something and use equipment with our own culture, design and creativity,” he told Iranian television on Wednesday.
In a post on X, he added that after attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure, “an eye-for-an-eye sum is in effect, and a new level of confrontation has begun”.
However, possibly aware of the threat to his own security, he did not, unlike the late Larijani, appear in public at pro-government rallies last week in support of the Palestinian cause.
A qualified pilot, Ghalibaf is known for boasting that he is able to captain jumbo jets. Farzan Sabet, a managing researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said that after Larijani’s killing Ghalibaf was the “person likely overseeing the war effort and strategy”.
