Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi

Muhammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi Giwachi (31 January 1935 – 1 January 2021) was an Iranian Shia scholar, political theorist and philosopher who served as the spiritual leader of the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability.

He was a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he headed a minority faction.

He had been called 'the most conservative' and the most 'powerful' clerical oligarch in Iran's leading center of religious learning, the city of Qom.

Many of his students have gone on to "occupy sensitive administrative and security posts" in the Islamic Republic, serving as "guardians" of (his version of) Islamic government.

He also attended the Shāfīʿiya School, another seminary in the city before moving to Najaf's Hindi School in Iraq in 1950.

Yazdi's study in Iraq lasted 7 months.

He then moved to Qom to study in Qom Seminary, where he continued his education in fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence).

He studied works of Avicenna and Mulla Sadra.

His teachers included prominent figures such as Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Bahjat Foumani.

He was also among the students of Ayatollah Allameh Tabatabaei, the author of Tafsir al-Mizan, the influential Shi'a exegesis of Quran.

From 1952 to 1960, in the holy city of Qom, he participated in the courses taught by Ruhollah Khomeini and Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i; and, for approximately fifteen years, he was a student of Mohammad-Taqi Bahjat Foumani.

Mesbah Yazdi advocated Islamic philosophy and in particular Mulla Sadra's transcendent school of philosophy (Hikmat-e Muta`aliya).

He believed that Iranians were moving away from religion and the values of Islamic revolution; and opposed western-style freedom and democratic governance, promoted by the Iranian reform movement.

Yazdi's actual last name was Giwachi, an occupational surname indicating his ancestors produced a type of traditional footwear called Giwah.

After he completed his primary education in the town of Yazd at the age of 13, he entered Khān School, a seminary in his hometown.

He graduated in 1960.

Mesbah Yazdi became politically active in 1963, following the 15th of Khordad movement (demonstrations against the arrest of Ayatollah Khomeini).

He was involved in community organizing circulating petitions against the Shah's White Revolution reforms.

After Khomeini was released from arrest, Mesbah Yazdi was among clerics who celebrated in the Feyziyeh School.

He abandoned political activity before Ayatollah Khomeini's exile in 1964 and went back to theological work.

Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, he assisted the other clerics, i.e., Mohammad Beheshti and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in publishing two journals called "Mission of Prophet Muhammad" and "Revenge"; and was responsible for all publishing activities in "Revenge".

He authored works strenuously denying the historical consensus that Ali Shariati's ideas contributed anything at all to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Mesbah-Yazdi had been described as close to Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Khomeini's first designated heir who was assassinated in Hafte Tir bombing in 1981 (despite being considered a moderate), and is (or was) a member of the school's board of directors.

Mesbah Yazdi is reported to have been "politically isolated" until 1989, when Ruhollah Khomeini died.

In 1997, after the election of President Mohammad Khatami, Mesbah Yazdi encouraged Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbolli to put a stop to the reform agitation by any means, including violence.

He had been named by Akbar Ganji as "having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders" for the 1998 chain murders assassinations of five Iranian dissidents.

After the decline of the reform movement in 2003, his supporters made gains in local and parliamentary elections.

In 2005, Mesbah Yazdi supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential bid and subsequently gained "direct influence" in the Iranian government through the appointment of loyal supporters "to high posts" after Ahmadinejad's victory.

In October 2006, an acolyte of Mesbah-Yazdi, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, was appointed head of the election commission, supervisor of the poll for the Assembly of Experts, and many of the candidates in the 2006 Assembly of Experts elections were Mesbah-Yazdi loyalists (though they ran as independent candidates to avoid revealing their affiliation to him).

However, his group failed to achieve a majority in that election, leaving the assembly in the hands of pragmatic conservatives.

Mesbah-Yazdi himself won a seat but finished only in sixth-place in Tehran municipality where he ran, and had the minority faction in the assembly.

Mesbah-Yazdi supported Ahmadinejad in 2009 and declared his election a miracle and a gift from the Hidden Imam.

On 22 June, a few days after security forces broke up one of the biggest election protests, Mesbah-Yazdi "addressed a gathering" of Revolutionary Guards and told them:

"'Do not be worried about the events and earthquakes that have occurred. Know that God created this world as a test, ... The supreme leader holds a great many of the blessings God has given us and at a time of such uncertainties our eyes must turn to him.'"

By 2011, however, he was sharply critical of Ahmadinejad saying that he was behaving "unnaturally" and needed to be "saved."

After Ahmadinejad fired intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi without consulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Mesbah Yazdi stated, "That a human being would behave in a way that angers his closest friends and allies and turns them into opponents is not logical for any politician."

According to some sources, Mesbah-Yazdi is rumored to had ambitions to succeed Khamenei as Supreme Leader.

Some clerics and some newspapers feared Mesbah-Yazdi was trying to expand his power by "packing" the Assembly of Experts with "loyalists."

In 2016 he was defeated for reelection to the Assembly.

Mesbah Yazdi believed that the educational system of hawza should be changed and his proposal was approved by Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, so he and Mohammad Beheshti establish the Haghani School (also Haqqani) in Qom to train the future cadres of Iran.