Habib as the Harbinger

It was around one year ago that a joke about Habibollah Asgaroladi and his brother Asadollah began circulating in the Iranian cyberspace. The joke goes as follows:

“Two beggars were sitting side by side near Vatican City. One had a cross in front of him; the other one an Allah. People went by and looked at them, but only put money into the hat of the beggar sitting behind the cross. A priest passed by and seeing what happened, went over to the beggar behind the Allah and said: “don't you understand? This is a Catholic country. People aren't going to give you money if you sit there with an Allah in front of you, especially when you're sitting beside a beggar who has a cross. They would probably give money to him just out of spite." The beggar behind the Allah listened to the priest, turned to the other beggar with the cross and said: "Hey Habibollah, look who's trying to teach the Asgaroladi brothers about marketing.”

Idealist. Asgaroladi's mughshot in Shah's prison.

The original joke is of course in English. But the way it was localized is quite telling. Marketing: for most of his life, Habibollah Asgaroladi faced rumors of accumulating legendary wealth. Eventually, his brother Assadollah, head of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce and business magnate, said that he was the wealthy one, and Habibollah was a victim of confusion. Family name: the translator of the joke had decided to replace the Goldenstein brothers with Asgaroladis, perhaps a thinly-veiled anti-Semitism: the strongest rumor against Habibollah Asgaroladi Mosalman during his political life was that he had Jewish roots and his full family name was in fact Asgaroladi No-Mosalman (Newly Muslim), a rumor that he denied and attributed it to a bureaucratic mistake.

Asgaroladi was born in 1932 in Tehran into a petite bourgeoisie family and remained faithful to his socio-economic roots for the rest of his life. Following the familial tradition, he started working at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar at a young age. Tehran’s Bazaar, dominated by the religious middle class, wielded significant political influence since the days of Qajar dynasty, an influence which continues to date. It was within this politically active environment where Asgaroladi and fellow Islamists merged their congregations to form Mo’talefeh-ye Eslami, Islamic Coallition, a confederation that was close to Ayatollah Khomeini. The group left its mark on pre-Revolution politics with a successful assassination of Prime Minister Hassan-Ali Mansour in 1965. Four of its members faced the firing squad, while Habibollah Asgaroladi received a life imprisonment. He spent thirteen years in prison before receiving pardon from the Shah, who was under Washington’s pressure to ease political pressure.

With archrival Behzad Nabavi in Cabinet. Economic and political differences ran deep.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution turned Mo’talefeh into an influential political group. Habibollah was elected as Tehran’s MP for the first parliament, Majles. He later resigned from his post to serve as the Minister of Trade and Commerce. However, the laissez faire economic viewpoint of Asgaroladi and his fellow Bazaar-based conservatives stood at odds with that of the equally powerful leftists. During the war against Iraq, Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the majority of the cabinet advocated tight state control over economy, while Asgaroladi, along with some other members of the cabinet believed in ‘popularizing economy’. Asgaroladi eventually resigned from his post, focusing on the administration of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, the state’s main charity fund, where he was appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini as founding member.

At the midst of Iran-Iraq war in 1985, Habibollah Agarowladi made a second appearance in the presidential election. His first attempt in 1981, mainly carried out to create an air of competition among ‘insider’ candidates, had brought him 1.72% of the votes. His second attempt was equally unimpressive, with only 0.23 percent added to this vote base, which brought him the third place after Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Kashani.

Asgaroladi called for his 'brother' Mousavi to repent and return.

Mo’talefeh found the chance to play a stronger role with the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei in 1989. In the fourth parliament, in absence of disqualified leftist candidates, Asgaroladi and fellow conservatives dominated the legislative. In 1996, he was also appointed by Ayatollah Khamenei as a member of the Council of Expediency Discernment, the Islamic Republic’s ‘board of trustees’ which arbitrates between the parliament and the Guardian Council. During these years, Mo’talefeh and its organ, Shoma, were engaged in theorizing a political philosophy of the Islamic Republic, one which foregrounded the Islamic essence of the regime, particularly the role of Vali-ye Faqih, the Supreme Jurisprudent and leader, and relegated the elective constituent of the political system. Such theorizations received strong responses from Leftist organs, hands cut from power, especially Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization (not to be confused with People’s Mujahedin of Iran, MEK) and its organ Asr-e Ma weekly. They disparagingly called Mo’talefeh “the Bazaar Party”, and reminded Asgaroladi that Ayatollah Khomeini had indirectly called him and his fellow rightists in Mousavi’s cabinet, people who were “unable to manage even a bakery”.

Despite his sharp differences and sporadic criticism of the Reformists, Habibollah Asgaroladi tried to play a conciliatory role in the political unrests following the 2009 presidential election. His soothing remarks and his defense of the Revolution’s old guard invoked the anger of many hardliners who wanted to oust rivals from the political scene once and forever. At the height of anti-Hashemi propaganda of the Principlist media, Asgaroladi said: “you cannot write the story of any period in the Islamic Republic without mentioning Hashemi … Some people want to destroy all our pre-Ahmadinejad history.” He used his revolutionary card a second time in 2013 when he called Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi his ‘brothers’, and asked them to repent and ‘return to the bosom of the nation and the Islamic Republic’. Despite criticisms, he insisted that Mousavi and Karroubi were not ‘heads of the sedition’ themselves, as the hardliner media claimed, but they were surrounded by ill-intentioned people.

A relation based on respect, but not affection. The young president shunned the political heavyweight.

Asgaroladi refused to retract his remarks, despite pressure even from his own party, the Mo’talefeh. On the rival front, his words were frantically welcomed by the Reformists who viewed it as a breathing opportunity and a signal to return to the political scene. After his death on November 6, 2013, Reformist and ‘moderate’ newspapers lavished praise on him in their obituaries, trying their best to make wordplay headlines with his name habib (‘beloved’). For them, Habibollah was more than a respected, ‘balanced’ rival; he was the harbinger of political revival.

By: Ali Attaran