VZCZCXRO8387
PP RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHKUK
DE RUEHDIR #0016/01 0901319
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P R 301319Z MAR 08
FM IRAN RPO DUBAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0249
INFO RUCNIRA/IRAN COLLECTIVE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
RUMICEA/USCENTCOM INTEL CEN MACDILL AFB FL
RUEHDIR/IRAN RPO DUBAI 0242

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 IRAN RPO DUBAI 000016 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
LONDON FOR GAYLE, BERLIN FOR PAETZOLD 
BAKU FOR HAUGEN, ISTANBUL FOR ODLUM 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  3/30/2018 
TAGS: IR PGOV PREL
SUBJECT: QALIBAF -- A CHALLENGER FOR THE IRANIAN PRESIDENCY IN 2009? 
 
REF: RPO DUBAI 0008, 0012, 0013, 0014, 0015 
 
RPO DUBAI 00000016  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
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 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
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 
 
RPO DUBAI 00000016  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
(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 
 
----------------------- 
 
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