Iran’s Guardian Council on Sunday approved the country’s hardline speaker of parliament and five others to run in the country’s June 28 presidential election after a helicopter crash killed President Ebrahim Raisi and seven others.
The committee once again banned former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running.
The committee’s decision marks the starting gun in the two-week campaign to replace Lacey. By.
The Guardian Council is a panel of clerics and jurists ultimately overseen by Khamenei. Letting the election pass comes amid tensions over a rapidly advancing nuclear program.
The Guardian Council also continues to exclude women or anyone calling for radical changes in the country’s governance.
The event could include a live televised debate on Iran’s state broadcaster. Candidates also advertise on billboards and give campaign speeches to support their campaigns.
So far, neither has provided any specifics, although they all promise better economic conditions for the country, which is now enriching uranium more than ever before under sanctions from the United States and other Western countries over its nuclear program. All are closer to weapons-grade level.
Such state matters remain Khamenei’s final decision, but past presidents have favored engaging or confronting the West on the issue.
The most prominent candidate remains Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former mayor of Tehran with close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. However, many remember Qalibaf as a Guards general who participated in the violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999.
Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013. Raisi won the 2021 election, which had the lowest turnout for a presidential election in Iran, after all major opponents found themselves disqualified.
Khamenei gave a speech last week alluding to qualities highlighted by Qalibaf’s supporters, which may indicate the supreme leader’s support for the speaker.
However, Qalibaf’s role in the crackdown may look different after Iran has endured years of unrest stemming not only from its ailing economy but also the 2022 death of a young woman, Mahesa Amini. Mahsa Amini’s death triggered massive protests.
Other candidates include former senior nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, who ran in 2013 and registered in 2021 before withdrawing to support Lacey. Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani also quit in 2021 in support of Raisi. Mostafa Pourmohammadi is the former Minister of Justice. Raisi’s vice-president, Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, ran in the 2021 presidential election and finished last with just under 1 million votes.
Masoud Pezeshkian, the only reformist candidate on the hardline slate, was not thought to have much of a chance.
The Guardian Council disqualified Ahmadinejad, the firebrand former president who questioned the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad increasingly challenged Khamenei toward the end of his term and is remembered for the bloody crackdown on the 2009 Green Movement protests. He was also disqualified from the panel in the last election.
It also blocked a visit by former Speaker Ali Larijani, a conservative close to Iran’s former relatively moderate president, Hassan Rouhani. This is the second consecutive time Larinjani has been barred from running.
Former Iranian central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati, who is running in 2021, and Eshaq Jahan, who served as deputy governor under moderate President Hassan Rouhani Eshaq Jahangiri was also disqualified.
The election comes amid tensions between Iran and the West over Russia’s supply of weapons in its war in Ukraine. As Yemen’s Houthi rebels attack ships in the Red Sea over Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, their support for militia proxy forces across the Middle East is increasingly in the spotlight.
Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdullahian and others were killed in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran on May 19. The investigation continues, but authorities said there were no immediate signs of foul play in the crash on a cloud-covered hillside.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, in the chaotic days after the country’s Islamic revolution, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai.
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