Grand National Alliance (Iran) Explained

Grand National Alliance
Foundation:	July 1979
Country:	Iran
Seats1 Title:	Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution

The Grand National Alliance (Persian: اتحاد بزرگ ملّی|etteḥād-e bozorg-e mellī) 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:

• Revolutionary Organization (sāzmān-e enqelābī) and its youth wing the Revolutionary Youth Organization (sāzmān-e javānān-e enqelābī), a Maoist group split from the Tudeh Party of Iran which was later merged into the Laborers' Party of Iran
• Iranian Women's Society (jamʿiyat-e zanān-e Īrān)
• Justice Society (jamʿiyat-e edālat)
• Confederation of Iranian Students (konfederāsīūn-e jahānī-e moḥaṣṣelīn wa dānešjūyān-e īrānī)
• The Flag of Sattar Khan (səttar xan bayrağı), an Azeri-language publication which later became aligned with the Laborers' Party of Iran
• United Campaign for Establishment of the Working Class Party (etteḥād-e mobāraza dar rāh-e ījād-e hezb-e ṭabaqa-ye kārgar), later merged into the Laborers' Party of Iran

Candidates

The candidates endorsed by the coalition for Tehran Province, were:

Constituency	Candidate endorsed	Group	Votes	%	Rank	Result
Tehran	Mahmoud Taleghani	FMI	2,016,801	79.86	1st	Won
	Abolhassan Banisadr		1,763,126	69.82	2dnd	Won
	Habibollah Peyman	MMM	164,644	6.52	15th	Defeated
	Hassan Nazih	FMI	44,765	1.77	30th	Defeated
	Lotfollah Meisami		11,274	0.45	41st	Defeated
	Parvaneh Forouhar	NPI	8,110	0.32	43rd	Defeated
	Ali Sadeghi		3,473	0.14	47th	Defeated
	Majid Zarbakhsh		2,719	0.11	50th	Defeated
	Farideh Garman		2,685	0.11	51st	Defeated
	Hadi Soudbakhsh		990	0.04	66th	Defeated
Source:

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 (born 1940 in Abadan, Iran) 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 (CISNU) 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:

Constituency	Candidate endorsed	Group	Votes	%	Rank	Result
Tehran	Khalil Haghighat		131	0.01	90th	Defeated
Fars	Iraj Kashkouli		5,455	0.89	13th	Defeated
Gilan	Hossein Hosseinkhani-Moghadam		Did not run
	Masoumeh Zamiri		668	0.19	16th	Defeated
Khuzestan	Ali Saberi		6,402	0.37	14th	Defeated
Isfahan	Asghar Tofangsazi		1,815	0.19	20th	Defeated
Kermanshahan	Khadijeh Soleimani		574	0.25	15th	Defeated
East Azerbaijan	Bagher Mortazavi Khosrowshahi		2,652	0.29	22nd	Defeated

See also

• Coalition of Islamic Parties
• Quintuple Coalition
• Septuple Coalition