Mostafa Kavakebian

Mostafa Kavakebian (born 18 March 1963) is an Iranian reformist politician with a Ph.D. in political science from Tarbiat Modarres University. He founded the Democracy Party of Iran (Hezb-e Mardomsalari) in 2000 and has served as its secretary-general. He was twice elected to the Islamic Consultative Assembly: representing Semnan and Mehdishahr from 2008 to 2012, and representing Tehran from 2016 to 2020. The Guardian Council disqualified him from presidential candidacies in 2005, 2013, 2017, 2021, and 2024. He also serves as editor-in-chief of Mardomsalari newspaper, affiliated with his party.

Kavakebian is associated with the reformist camp and has at various points aligned with the broader reform movement while maintaining his own party structure. Despite his reformist profile, he attracted significant controversy in July 2025 when he appeared on Iranian state television and claimed that Catherine Perez-Shakdam had maintained sexual relationships with 120 senior Iranian officials. Iran's state broadcaster publicly dismissed the claims as "obscene and false," and Iran's security and judicial bodies stated that no documents indicated any such conduct. Tehran's prosecutor subsequently charged Kavakebian for making unsupported public allegations that disturbed public opinion. He was convicted and sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for four years, and banned from all media activity for two years. The episode illustrates the disinformation dynamics surrounding the Perez-Shakdam case, in which regime-aligned figures fabricated sensationalized narratives to reframe an institutional embarrassment as a sophisticated foreign intelligence operation.