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Tehran's ever-ambitious mayor

Tehran's mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is making plans for his supporters to gain seats in the February parliamentary elections.
Tehran's mayor and presidential candidate, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf (C) arrives to vote in the first round of the presidential election on June 14, 2013 at a polling station at Shah Abdolazim mausoleum in southern Tehran. Iranians are voting to choose a new president in an election the reformists hope their sole candidate will win in the face of divided conservative ranks, four years after the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI        (Photo credit should read BEHROUZ MEHRI/

TEHRAN, Iran — Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has formed a political party in the hopes of having his supporters win seats in the February parliamentary elections.

Ghalibaf started his career in fatigues during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when he led a division. After the war, he gradually took steps toward political power. In 1997, the year Reformist Mohammad Khatami was elected president, he was appointed as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force.

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