Grand National Alliance (Iran)


The Grand National Alliance was a secular electoral alliance contesting in the 1979 Iranian Constitutional Convention election. The candidates listed by this coalition mostly included communists and nationalists.

Parties in coalition

The groups named in the coalition's declaration of existence, were:
The candidates endorsed by the coalition for Tehran Province, were:
Of the ten candidates, only two won the election who were also listed by the Coalition of Islamic Parties. Four belonged to the coalition partners, who were all defeated. They included communists Ali Sadeghi, Majid Zarbakhsh, Farideh Garman and Hadi Soudbakhsh.
Farideh Garman was an architect who had just returned to Iran after settling for 14 years in Italy.
Majid Zarbakhsh was a former student leader who had arrived in the West Germany to study and was involved in anti-Shah protests with German students associated with the New Left. In August 1969, as a secretary of the Confederation of Iranian Students he went to Jordan and participated in the congress of the General Union of Palestinian Students, before visiting Ruhollah Khomeini in Najaf to ensure him that CISNU was both anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. He also agreed to consider publishing more onn Islamic aspects of opposition to Shah in that meeting. He was, along with Bahman Nirumand and Mehdi Khanbaba-Tehran, part of the triumvirate of the 'Cadres of the Revolutionary Organization', an organization split from the 'Revolutionary Organization of the Tudeh Party' which was itself an offshoot of the Tudeh Party of Iran.
The provincial candidates who were supported at least by one of the coalition partners were: