Ahmad Tavakkoli

Ahmad Tavakkoli was an Iranian conservative and principlist politician and journalist. He was a member of the Expediency Discernment Council. Also he was the managing-director of Alef news website and founder of the corruption watchdog, non-governmental organization Justice and Transparency Watch.
Tavakkoli was a representative of Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr electoral district in the parliament and the director of the Majlis Research Center.

Life and career

Tavakkoli was the minister of labour under Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a parliament representative from Behshahr, and a presidential candidate in two of the presidential elections in Iran.
Tavakkoli temporarily left politics after the leftist opposition forced him out of the ministry of labour. He founded Resalat, a conservative newspaper, and later left Iran to study economics in the UK, where he received his PhD.

Tavakkoli was a critic of a capitalist economy, and backed the government's role in controlling the economy. He was a cousin of the Larijani brothers, including Ali Larijani and Mohammad Javad Larijani.
Tavakkoli was also a fierce critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On 2 March 2011, PBS's Tehran Bureau reported that Tavakkoli criticized the then President for mentioning only Iran and not Islam in recent speeches.
Tavakkoli died of a heart attack in Tehran, on 23 July 2025, at the age of 74.