Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, who has already run for president several times, is being accused by fellow conservatives of using City Hall as a steppingstone to the presidency, the route Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to power in 2005.
For more than two decades, Tehran’s mayoralty has served as a launchpad for conservative politicians with presidential ambitions. Ahmadinejad made it the whole way. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf spent 12 years as mayor building a national political identity but never won the presidency.
The jockeying comes amid a war between Iran and the United States and Israel. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the war’s opening strikes on Feb. 28, and his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen since taking office.
Tehran has a population of about 10 million, while the wider metropolitan area is home to roughly 14 million people. It is the center of Iran’s political power; the president’s office, parliament and ministries are all located in Tehran.
Tehran’s mayor controls hundreds of trillions of rials (millions of dollars) in annual spending and has responsibility for transport, construction and municipal services used by millions of residents. The office gives the mayor money to spend, projects to advertise and a chance to show voters what his version of government might look like.
The mayor of Tehran has access to contracts, appointments and huge public resources. Successive Tehran administrations have faced allegations involving patronage, opaque spending and misuse of municipal assets.
Zakani’s latest programs also follow a familiar populist playbook associated with Ahmadinejad: using City Hall to offer economic benefits directly to ordinary residents.
His “Zero Inflation” program promises to keep prices unchanged for six months on basic foods sold through Tehran’s municipal retail network. It began with 12 products, including rice, meat and cooking oil, and is supposed to expand to 15. City Hall has also introduced benefits for families with newborn children.
Zakani presents the programs as an attempt to protect Tehran residents from an economic crisis made worse by war. He has also talked about the possibility of expanding the food-price program beyond the capital.
Mehdi Eghrarian, a conservative member of the Tehran City Council, which chooses the mayor of Tehran, sees something more political.
Zakani wants to be seen as an “Ahmadinejad II,” adopting the former president’s image as a politician concerned with poorer and middle-class Iranians, Eghrarian said, an approach he described as “performative governance.”
This member of the city council of Tehran offered a simple recommendation for Tehran’s next city council: Choose a mayor who does not want to become president.
History repeating?
Ahmadinejad was little known nationally when Tehran’s conservative city council made him mayor in 2003. But as mayor, Ahmadinejad cultivated a populist image focused on ordinary residents. Tehran developed financial assistance programs for communities and religious organizations that went well beyond basic municipal services.
He also offered a special loan for people who wanted to get married but could not afford it.
Two years after entering City Hall, Ahmadinejad became president, defeating Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the most powerful figures in Iranian politics.
The same City Hall that helped build Ahmadinejad’s national profile later became the subject of corruption allegations.
Years after Ahmadinejad left, Tehran council member Mohammad Ali Najafi said an audit had identified about 3.2 trillion rials (roughly $350 million to $390 million at the time) in municipal expenditures from 2003 to 2005 without sufficient documentation or approved budget lines. Najafi alleged that a substantial portion had been spent on the 2005 presidential election.
No court ever ruled that Ahmadinejad had personally stolen or unlawfully spent the money.
Never made it
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who was the mayor of Tehran from 2005 to 2017, never made it to the presidency. But the mayor’s office transformed him from a military man to a politician. He is now the speaker of parliament and, after the death of several senior Iranian leaders in the current war, has emerged as a central figure in the political establishment and a key negotiator in talks with the United States.
His 12 years at Tehran City Hall contributed to his national profile. During his tenure, the city expanded the construction of highways, tunnels, bridges and the metro, and supporters held up Tehran as evidence of his administrative experience.
But his years at City Hall were, as well, marked by serious financial controversies.
One involved financial assistance to a charity whose trustees included his wife. Tehran council members questioned the transactions and the relationship between the municipality and the charity. Ghalibaf’s former municipal administration rejected accusations of wrongdoing and said the transactions followed legal procedures and official valuations.
Other allegations involved discounted municipal properties.
One corruption case involving his administration did end in a conviction, although not of Ghalibaf himself. Isa Sharifi, his longtime deputy at City Hall, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2021 in a corruption case. Ghalibaf was not charged in that case and has rejected corruption allegations involving himself and his family.
Well-trod path
Zakani arrived at City Hall in 2021 with his presidential ambitions already in hand.
He managed Ghalibaf’s 2005 unsuccessful presidential campaign and tried to run himself in 2013 and 2017 before the Guardian Council disqualified him. (The council vets candidates for president.) It approved him in 2021, but he withdrew in favor of Ebrahim Raisi and became Tehran’s mayor months later.
He ran again in the 2024 presidential election but again withdrew before the voting.
He has already faced several controversies as well.
Soon after becoming mayor in 2021, he appointed his son-in-law, Hossein Heydari, as a special adviser and assistant. Zakani canceled the appointment after criticism, but council members later alleged that Heydari continued to intervene in municipal decisions despite holding no formal position. Zakani acknowledged that he continued to consult him.
There have also been questions about municipal accounts. One council member raised concerns over roughly 170 trillion rials (almost $93 million) in unrecorded expenditures. Municipal officials said millions of dollars in project payments had yet to be entered into the system.
Then came Tehran’s agreements with Chinese companies for buses, taxis and other transport equipment. Council members complained that they had not been given sufficient access to the text of contracts worth billions of dollars. Zakani and municipal officials defended the purchases as necessary to repair Tehran’s aging transport system and said secrecy around some details was related to sanctions and commercial considerations.
Next steps
The next presidential election is in 2028. Iranian officials are considering holding it alongside parliamentary elections in May that year. But the Iran in which that election will take place is very different from the country that elected Ahmadinejad in 2005.
The political system is trying to manage both a war and its first change of supreme leader in nearly four decades. What Iran will look like by 2028 is difficult to predict, but Tehran City Hall will likely continue to fan presidential ambitions.
