In this section we follow leads from our previous investigations on bonyads and the Khamenei family. This has helped us further identify the Iranian clans who run the country’s political business empires. Highlights of our latest findings include:
How one industrialist teamed up with clerics and the paramilitary to amass wealth. Motallebi Kashani’s vast business network illuminates the ways in which members of Iran’s political right are beholden to religious and defense institutions.
Qassem Soleimani’s legacy lies not in his military prowess, but in the business empire he helped create.
Conflicts of interest, nepotism, and preferential treatment pervade charity ownership among Iran’s ruling elite.
How a wealthy, unelected Principlist pulls the strings of his coalition.
Adept at forging alliances to advance his agenda, Speaker Qalibaf has been filling prominent positions with friends and confederates such as Ahadian, an in-law of the Supreme Leader.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of Iran’s largest, with government subsidies of over $10 billion annually. Yet it remains corrupt and inept while patients sometimes pay with their lives.
The family of IRGC founder Mohsen Rezaei has the power to veto parliamentary legislation, mastermind covert ops and direct the content of Iran’s most popular news site. The clan also controls Iranian sports institutions, including Esteqlal football team and the Taekwondo Federation.
IRGC founder Mohsen Rezaei cultivates his clan networks in many ways, one of which is Sobh Qarib Iranian Foundation. Though obscure, the Foundation brings together a group of IRGC officers and right-wing clerics whose interests range from high politics to helicopter and pasta production.
An investigation into Tabnak, Iran’s most visited news website, shows how the state-funded outlet exists primarily to advance the private interests of IRGC founder Mohsen Rezaei, who is also Tabnak’s owner.
Public business records reveal a financial connection between IRGC founder and prominent Expediency Council member Mohsen Rezaei, and former Tehran mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, himself a former IRGC commander.
Qalibaf, who previously served as commander of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbia conglomerate, struck a controversial deal between Tehran Municipality and the IRGC in 2013. As mayor, Qalibaf awarded Khatam al-Anbia an exclusive four-year $6.06 billion urban development contract in Tehran, bypassing public procurement procedures.
The Dastgheib family is mired in controversy surrounding the surreptitious destruction of cultural heritage sites in the province of Shiraz, and in the apparent bullying of at least one seminary whistleblower who raised the issue.
A prominent newspaper editor who is also a family relative of Ali Khamenei benefited from the forced takeover of reformist media by courts close to the Supreme Leader’s Office.
Outspoken Tehran MP Ali Motahari is known for his fiery speeches and unrelenting criticism of Iran’s conservative leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But an examination of his family ties and business holdings shows Motahari to be in collusion with the same individuals whom he publicly criticizes.
IRGC mastermind Mohsen Rezaei forms the epicenter of several powerful networks whose members are in key positions in the Expediency Council, a 39-member body with the power to make executive decisions on behalf of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Gholamreza Tajgardoon is a reformist MP whose illustrious political career is studded with prestigious appointments, awards of merit and one-on-one meetings with regime elites like the late IRGC General Qassem Soleimani.
Recently elected Tehran MP Seyyed Nezamoldin Mousavi owes his political successes to strategic connections in conservative media outlets. His rise to power sheds light on the central role that state-funded media organizations play in Iranian high politics.
My mother once told me that I was conceived in a hotel room in Beirut. “I still remember. It was off of Hamra,” she said, light-heartedly and unsolicited after we had enjoyed dinner and some wine.