QALIBAF -- A CHALLENGER FOR THE IRANIAN PRESIDENCY IN 2009?

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 IRAN RPO DUBAI 000016

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TAGS: IR PGOV PREL
SUBJECT: QALIBAF -- A CHALLENGER FOR THE IRANIAN PRESIDENCY IN 2009?

REF: RPO DUBAI 0008, 0012, 0013, 0014, 0015

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CLASSIFIED BY: Jillian Burns, Director, Iran Regional Presence
Office, DoS.
REASON: 1.4 (d)

1.(SBU) Summary: Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has made a reputation
for himself as an efficient technocrat during his tenure thus
far as mayor of Tehran. In both his domestic and international
trips and interviews, Qalibaf appears to be deliberately
presenting himself as the anti-Ahmadinejad. The rivalry between
the two, both former IRGC, is widely known and has been noted in
the Iranian press, largely in the context of turf battles over
the Tehran municipality. Although Qalibaf has not yet
definitively declared he will run again in the 2009 presidential
race, after his failed bid in 2005, his public statements and
appearances all strongly suggest he will. Most observers take
it as a foregone conclusion.

2.(SBU) Summary continued: Qalibaf has done much in recent
months to raise his international profile, including travel to
the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, where he met world
leaders, and his trip to Baghdad, just days in advance of
President Ahmadinejad's visit. He has also given several
interviews to prominent Western media outlets. Although Qalibaf
appears to be successfully burnishing his external reputation as
a pragmatic modernizer and his internal reputation as an
effective manager, it is too early to determine his prospects
for 2009, including the crucial issue of support from the
Supreme Leader. And despite his comment in his Times interview
that it is wrong to think there is a "dominant" desire for
confrontation in Iran, it is also too early to determine whether
a Qalibaf presidency would result in changed government policy.
End summary.

Qalibaf seeks to raise his international profile

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3.(C) Without clarifying why he is seeking out international
attention, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has been raising
his international profile with trips abroad, meetings with world
leaders, and interviews in prominent Western press. Qalibaf
appears to packaging himself as the anti-Ahmadinejad, i.e. a
pragmatic modernizer, not an ideologue. At the same time, he is
not straying far from conservative ranks inside Iranian
politics, joining Ali Larijani and Mohsen Rezaie in forming an
alternate conservative list in the recent Majles elections
(reftels). By no means is he sliding over to the reformist
camp. He also distances himself from centrists close to
Expediency Council chair Rafsanjani. When IRPOff asked an
Iranian political analyst why Qalibaf is not politically linked
to Rafsanjani - given his longstanding reputation as leader of
pragmatic technocrats - the contact responded that Qalibaf would
avoid links to Rafsanjani so as not to lose the favor of the
Supreme Leader, who fears Rafsanjani as a rival.

4.(C) Contacts consistently rate Qalibaf as an excellent mayor,
far superior to Ahmadinejad and better than Rafsanjani ally
Gholam Hossein Karbaschi, who was mayor from 1988-98 but left in
a financial scandal.

5.(C) Since the beginning of 2008, Qalibaf has given interviews
to three major Western press outlets: the Financial Times
(January 8),British newspaper The Times (March 14),and Time
Magazine (March 18). One contact said it was remarkable in the
context of conservative politics in Iran that Qalibaf in his
January 8 Financial Times interview named (among others) an
American city -- New York -- as one model he used in running
Tehran.

6.(SBU) In January, Qalibaf attended the World Economic Forum in
Davos, where he met with several international figures including
UK foreign secretary David Miliband and Swiss president Pascal
Couchepin. Qalibaf expressed interest in Miliband during his
March 14 Times interview, saying he thought a new generation of
politicians was emerging in the West.

7.(SBU) In late February, Qalibaf traveled to Iraq, only days
before President Ahmadinejad's much-publicized visit there.
While his visit was touted as forging municipality links between
Iraqi cities and Tehran, Qalibaf also met with senior Iraqi
government officials including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, Deputy President Adel Abdul
Mahdi, as well as Baghdad mayor Sabir al-Isawi. According to
Iranian press, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council

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(SIIC) Abdulaziz al-Hakim hosted a dinner for Qalibaf during his
visit.

8.(C) Even more notably, Qalibaf -- but not Ahmadinejad -- met
with Grand Ayatollah Sistani while in Iraq. Ahmadinejad's
original travel plans included Najaf and Karbala, but in the
end, he only visited Baghdad. (Note: One contact recently noted
that Sistani is very influential among Iranians who consider
themselves religious but are dissatisfied with the current
political regime in Iran. End note.) While in Iraq, the Tehran
mayor pledged his city's assistance on projects to rebuild
Baghdad, Najaf, and Karbala, and announced that Tehran and
Baghdad were setting up four joint working groups on
engineering, traffic and urban transportation, education, and
cultural services.

Biographical background

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9.(U) Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf served as an IRGC officer during
the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, following which he was appointed by
then-IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaie as head of the IRGC Air Force
in 1997 to an open source biography. Qalibaf remains a licensed
pilot, piloting Iran Air commercial flights on a regular basis
in order to keep his license current. Supreme Leader Khamenei
appointed Qalibaf head of the Law Enforcement forces (LEF, the
national police) in 1999.

10.(U) Qalibaf was among the 24 IRGC commanders who warned
then-President Khatami in a July 1999 letter that if he did not
act to control student protests at Tehran University, they would
take matters into their own hands. In contrast to this
hard-line approach, Qalibaf's 1999-2005 tenure as LEF chief
reportedly saw fewer incidents of police harassment of students.
As head of the LEF, Qalibaf won public praise from the Supreme
Leader and even from some reformist quarters for handling
student protests in 2003 without excessive use of force by
police, although he also accused some reformist MPs of inciting
the student rioters.

11.(SBU) Following his unsuccessful bid for the presidency in
2005, he succeeded Ahmadinejad as mayor of Tehran (a position
appointed by the city council). If pro-Ahmadinejad supporters
had done better in the 2006 municipal elections, Qalibaf would
have likely lost his position, but he retained it.

12.(C) Comment: In his March 14 Times interview, Qalibaf said,
"I would like the West to change its attitude to Iran and trust
Iran and rest assured that there's an attitude in Iran to
advance issues through dialogue." He added that it was wrong to
think that there is a "dominant" desire for confrontation and
conflict in Iran. That statement appears to represent a clear
attempt by Qalibaf to differentiate himself from Ahmadinejad in
the eyes of the international community, and to present himself
as a less antagonistic alternative to Iran's current president.
While there appears to be significant disaffection towards
Ahmadinejad among conservatives, Qalibaf risks alienating the
right-wing if he appears too "soft" on the West. One Western
diplomat in Tehran told IRPOff that a Qalibaf associate who was
involved in his 2005 presidential campaign has since turned away
from Qalibaf, saying he is not hard-line enough. Qalibaf's
Western-style presidential campaign (including, for example,
stylish campaign posters targeting the youth audience, and photo
ops of Qalibaf in aircraft cockpits) in 2005 generated criticism
from the hard right.

13.(C) Comment continued: Of critical importance for Qalibaf's
likely presidential bid will be the support of the Supreme
Leader. When Qalibaf ran in the 2005 presidential elections,
some believe he initially had Khamenei's support, but that
Khamenei switched his support at the last minute to Ahmadinejad.
Some observers have attributed this perceived change by
Khamenei to the fact that Qalibaf ran a very Western-style
presidential campaign; others claim that Khamenei's son Mojtaba
pushed Ahmadinejad to the forefront. In any case, Qalibaf will
need the support of the conservative elite in Iran for a
successful presidential bid in 2009. If Qalibaf decides to
challenge Ahmadinejad for the presidency next year, he will need
to calibrate all his international and domestic steps to rally
conservative support at home.
BURNS