Gholamhossein Karbaschi

Karbaschi was trained as a cleric in the holy city of Qom and spent time in Evin Prison for his political activities before the Islamic Revolution.[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E2DE113FF932A35754C0A96E958260 The Case of the Tehran Mayor: Reform on Trial] The New York Times

Karbaschi was a driving force for many new modernization efforts. As the Mayor of Tehran he was known for having bulldozed apartment buildings and office buildings built without city approval, removed revolutionary graffiti from walls, planted thousands of trees, banned much of the private traffic in central Tehran and opened more than a hundred parks. Karbaschi also angered bazaar merchants by raising taxes and contributing to the city's soaring real estate prices, earning him the reputation during his time as mayor of "the most loved and hated man in Tehran." He started the first Iranian full colour newspaper, Hamshahri when he was the mayor of Tehran.

Karbaschi was one of the key supporters of President Mohammad Khatami's first presidential election campaign which led to Khatami's landslide victory (1997). After Khatami's victory, a power struggle started within the political establishment of Iran between the reformists and conservatives of the Iranian government. Karbaschi's arrest in April 1998 prompted thousands of student demonstrators to clash with riot police, and the Interior Minister (who was later arrested for sacrilege) to complain that he had not been informed of the arrest despite the fact that Karbaschi was a member of the president's cabinet in addition to being mayor of Iran's capital and largest city.[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E0D8123FF935A15757C0A96E958260 The World: The Mayor and the Mullahs; The Mouths That Roared in Iran.] The New York Times. 26 April 1998

Karbaschi was arrested on 4 April 1998 on corruption charges.{{citation|author=David Lea|title=A Political Chronology of the Middle East|date=2001|publisher=Psychology Press|page=62|isbn=9781857431155}}

The prosecution of Karbaschi was called "the most prominent part of a campaign" by Iranian clerical conservatives "to thwart the reformist administration" of President Mohammad Khatami, rather than an honest attempt to "uncover and punish" financial corruption. The trial was often "a heated debate — at times a shouting match" — between judge Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei and Karbaschi, who holds the same clerical rank as Ejei. The trial "captured record audiences" while being broadcast on Iranian television, and was "debated in detail" in Iran's press.

In July 1998 Karbaschi was convicted of corruption and misuse of funds and began serving a two-year sentence in May 1999, "despite last-ditch efforts by his supporters" including a petition "signed by more than 130 members of parliament — nearly half the chamber" — asking supreme leader Ali Khamenei for a pardon.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/336541.stm Middle East, Tehran mayor goes to jail.] BBC. 6 May 1999 In January 2000 Khamenei agreed to decree his amnesty.

He is also the manager of Ham-Mihan, a new reformist newspaper published in Tehran.{{cite news|title=Another Iranian paper closed|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/750528.stm|accessdate=12 September 2014|work=BBC|date=16 May 2000}} This newspaper was forced to stop publishing twice. Once in the collective ban of almost all reformist newspapers in 2000 and again in July 2007 after a very short period of publication.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}

{{Portal|Iran|Biography}}

• Iranian reform movement

{{Reflist|33em}}

• {{cite journal |title=A Tale of Two Mayors: Courts and Politics in Iran and Turkey |author= Hootan Shambayati |journal= International Journal of Middle East Studies |volume= 36 |year= 2004 |issue= 2 |pages= 253–275 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |doi= 10.1017/S0020743804362057 |jstor= 3880034 |s2cid= 153768860 |hdl= 11693/24287 |hdl-access= free }}

{{commons category|Gholamhossein Karbaschi}}

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{{succession box | before = Morteza Tabatabaee| title = Mayor of Tehran|years=1990–1998| after = Morteza Alviri}}

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{{s-ttl|title=Representative of the Supreme leader in Gendarmerie|years=1980–1983}}

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{{s-ttl|title=Secretary-General of Executives of Construction Party|years=1998–2021}}

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{{s-ttl|title=Campaign manager of Mehdi Karroubi|years=2009}}

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{{s-ttl|title=Rotating President of the Council for Coordinating the Reforms Front

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{{s-aft|after=Mahmoud Sadeghi|as=Islamic Association of University Instructors representative}}

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{{Mayors of Tehran}}

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Category:1954 births

Category:Living people

Category:People from Qom

Category:Mayors of Tehran

Category:Executives of Construction Party politicians

Category:Governors of Isfahan

Category:Iranian newspaper publishers (people)

Category:Iranian Shia clerics

Category:Secretaries-general of political parties in Iran

Category:Rotating Presidents of the Council for Coordinating the Reforms Front

Category:Iranian politicians convicted of crimes

Category:Representatives of the supreme leader

Category:Iranian Gendarmerie personnel

Category:Iranian campaign managers