TEHRAN — "I testify that there is a deep understanding between Raisi and Qalibaf,” former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said on Sunday.

Haddad-Adel, the current chairman of the Coalition Council of the Revolution Forces, made the remarks at the presence of elected representatives of Tehran in the Assembly of Experts and Parliament in bi-elections and 21 members of the Tehran city council, who were elected in the June 18 elections held simultaneously with the presidential polls. 

The former senior MP said that he intends to thank Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf “who explicitly stated months ago when the coalition was arguing for the presidency that he would not enter the election race if Raisi came to the field, and he did so. 

“If it were not for this, the cooperation between the parliament and the government would not have been shaped, and now there is a deep and impenetrable agreement and honesty between the president-elect and Qalibaf, the heads of the government and the parliament, which I testify is not tactical at all,” he stated. 

Qalibaf withdrew candidacy in favor of Ebrahim Raisi in the final days in the 2017 presidential elections. 

Haddad-Adel went on to say that all should remember the time, space, history and geography in which they are serving the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic. 

“Imam Khomeini taught us that we should know that victory and success come from God, and thanking God for His blessings is our duty,” the former parliament speaker told the gathering as some members of the Coalition Council of the Islamic Revolution Forces were also present.

Stating that the June 18 elections carried a variety of multi-layered realities that each of which must be analyzed in its place, Haddad Adel said the most important achievement of the election was the participation of the people in the elections who have been enduring economic hardship for eight years. 

He described Iranians as "The people who were fed by foreign media outlets to distance themselves from the Islamic Republic and have been under the most crippling sanctions in history for more than 10 years."

Haddad-Adel said that the sanctions "seek to make the people rebellious against the estbalishment, and this was the last resort of the global imperialism for this nation to give up on the Revolution." 

He described the June 18 elections as a milestone inside and outside the country which had had a positive effect and changed the dynamics.

Stating that the elections will have a positive impact on the Vienna negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he said that the representatives of the new administration will be able to negotiate with an upper hand. 

‘We intend to serve people’

He went on to say that the faction that has gained power should focus on serving the people.

The goal of the officials should be to serve the Revolution and the values of the Revolution without any consideration or factionalism, he insisted.

“The only thing we do not think about in the coalition, and we have never set on the agenda, is to say what our share will be? Now that the desired government has won, we have no intention of saying that our comrades, group and party must be in the government, and we are looking to help Raisi, and of course one of the supports we can provide is to suggest him which forces should be used in which section of the administration,… our criterion is meritocracy, revolutionary attitude, service and devotion,” he added.

SA/PA