Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi

Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi was the most influential ideologue of the Iranian ultra-right, described as 'a hardliner to terrify hardliners'. A student of Ruhollah Khomeini at the Qom seminary, he co-founded the Haghani Seminary — the institution that trained the backbone of the Islamic Republic's clerical management class. He was the spiritual mentor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the guiding force behind the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, formally established in 2011 by his students. He endorsed Saeed Jalili in the 2013 presidential election and backed Ebrahim Raisi in 2017. He repeatedly urged the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to suppress the reform movement by any means. He died on 1 January 2021.