Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf or Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (, born 23 August 1961) is an Iranian conservative politician, former military officer, and current Speaker of the Parliament of Iran since 2020.

Ghalibaf was born on 23 August 1961 in Torqabeh, near Mashhad, in the diverse province of Razavi Khorasan to a Persian mother Kheirolnessa Boujmehrani and an ethnic Kurdish father Hossein Ghalibaf.

Moshir (born 1968) joined her husband as an adviser and head of women's affairs in the Municipality of Tehran.

Ghalibaf obtained bachelor in human geography from Tehran University, master in human geography from Islamic Azad University and PhD in political geography from Tarbiat Modares University.

At the age of 19, he was one of the commanders of the defense forces during the Iran–Iraq War.

Shortly afterwards he was named commander of the Rasulollah division.

By the time he was twenty-two, he was already commander of the Nasr Troops.

After the war he was selected as Deputy Commander of the Resistance Force and Basij Troops under General Afshar.

He began his military career during the Iran–Iraq War in 1980.

He became chief commander of the Imam Reza Brigade in 1982 and was chief commander of Nasr Division from 1983 to 1984.

Ghalibaf married Zahra Sadat Moshir in 1982 when he was twenty two years old.

In 1984, he was appointed head of the Khatam al-Anbia Construction Headquarters, which is the engineering arm of the IRGC.

Under his management, the headquarters launched a 165-kilometer railway connecting Mashhad to Sarakhs.

After the end of the war, he became Managing-Director of Khatam al-Anbia, an engineering firm controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was appointed as commander of the IRGC Air Force in 1996 by Ali Khamenei.

Ghalibaf received the degree of Major General in 1996 after he had completed a master's degree in geopolitics.

In 1998, when Mohsen Rezaei retired and Yahya Rahim Safavi took over as IRGC's new commander-in-chief, he was named Commander of Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Ghalibaf became one of the senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in later years.

Four years later, he became chief of the Iranian Police Forces after the previous commander was dismissed following the 1999 student protests.

As commander of the Revolutionary Guards Air Force during the 1999 student protests, Ghalibaf was one of the 24 IRGC commanders who sent a threatening letter to the reformist president Mohammad Khatami stating that if the protests were allowed to continue, they would take matters into their own hands.

Following the 1999 protests, he was appointed as chief of the Iranian Police Forces by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, to succeed General Hedayat Lotfian who was removed from his office during the violence.

After becoming chief of police, Ghalibaf initiated some reforms in the forces, including dropping all lawsuits against newspapers, modernization of police equipment and the Police 110 project, which aimed to make the police more accessible to the general public.

Ghalibaf was formerly Iran's Chief of police from 2000 to 2005 and commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Air Force from 1997 to 2000.

He holds a Ph.D. in political geography from Tarbiat Modares University.

He is also a pilot, certified to fly certain Airbus aircraft.

He was also appointed as Representative of President Mohammad Khatami during a campaign to combat smuggling in 2002.

He held office as the Mayor of Tehran from 2005 to 2017.

In September 2005, he was elected as Tehran's mayor by the City Council of Tehran.

He is also a professor at the University of Tehran.

Ghalibaf is often regarded a perennial candidate in the presidential elections.

He was also a candidate in the 2005 presidential election.

On 5 April 2005, Ghalibaf submitted his resignation from the military positions (including the police forces) due to his intention to run for the presidency of Iran.

When Ghalibaf lost the 2005 election, he was proposed as Mayor of Tehran along with Mohammad Aliabadi and Mohammad-Ali Najafi.

On 4 September 2005, he was elected as the next Mayor by the City Council of Tehran to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who left the office after being elected president.

He received 8 out of 15 votes of the council.

He was reelected for a second term on 2007 after receiving 12 votes with no opponent.

According to Bloomberg, he has used his position as mayor "to foster a reputation as a politician who gets things done."

He was a candidate in the 2013 presidential election but lost to Hassan Rouhani, in second place with 6,077,292 of the votes.

He announced his run for a third time in the 2017 election.

However, he withdrew on 15 May 2017 in favor of Ebrahim Raisi's candidacy.

In the 2020 Iranian legislative election, the Principlists regained the majority in the legislature, and Ghalibaf was elected as the new Speaker of Iran Parliament.