Six candidates to vie for presidency
Iran’s Guardian Council on Sunday approved six candidates for the June 28 election to succeed the late President Ebrahim Raisi who lost his life in a tragic helicopter crash last month.
The candidates announced by the Interior Ministry were selected from 80 registered hopefuls by the 12-member election supervisory council.
Among those approved are the Conservative Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and the former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili from the Steadfast Front.
Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the 2017 presidential campaign to support Raisi in his first failed presidential bid.
Just one Reformist candidate, Massoud Pezeshkian, 69, who is a lawmaker representing northwestern city of Tabriz in Iran’s Parliament, has been given the green light.
The Conservative former interior minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi has also been authorized to run.
Others on the list include Conservative Tehran mayor Alireza Zakani and incumbent Vice President Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, the head of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.
In a Sunday post on the X social media platform, Zakani said he would “compete until the end to continue the path of” Raisi.
Ahmadinejad, Larijani
disqualified
The Guardian Council once again barred former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running.
He was previously disqualified from entering the presidential races in 2017 and 2021.
The politician had said he was only heeding “a call from people from across the country” to run again, and he was confident he could resolve Iran’s domestic and international issues.
Others including former three-time parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Vahid Haqanian, a former commander in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, were also barred from standing.
Larijani was disqualified in 2021 presidential election.
Four women had also registered their candidacy but were disqualified.
According to Iran’s electoral law, campaigning should officially start from Sunday until 24 hours before the elections.
The campaign likely will include live, televised debates by the candidates on Iran’s state-run broadcaster. They also advertise on billboards and offer stump speeches to back their bids.
Iran’s presidential elections were originally slated for 2025 but were brought forward following Raisi’s unexpected death on May 19.
Raisi and seven members of his entourage, including foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were killed when their aircraft came down on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed former President Mohammad-Ali Rajai in the chaotic days after the country’s Islamic Revolution.
Following Raisi’s death, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei appointed Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, 68, as caretaker president in accordance with the Constitution.