TEHRAN: Iran’s Interior Ministry on Sunday announced the six candidates approved by the country’s Guardian Council for the June 28 election to replace President Ebrahim Raisi, who lost his life along with seven others in a helicopter crash. The Guardian Council again barred former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist, from running.
The candidates announced by the Interior Ministry were selected from 80 registered hopefuls by the Guardian Council which oversees elections in the Islamic republic. Only one is from the reformist camp, while former president Mahmud Ahmadinejad was not approved.
Iran’s interior ministry has announced the final list of six candidates approved by the Guardian Council to contend in the presidential election scheduled for June 28.
The list consists of senior government figures such as Saeed Jalili, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the current Parliament Speaker and Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist parliamentarian.
The council also approved Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former minister of justice and interior, Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, the current Vice President, and Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani to run for the election.
The snap election follows the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash on May 19 along with his seven companions. Several high-profile figures were disqualified from running, including ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, and former Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri.
The council’s decision represents the starting gun for a shortened, two-week campaign to replace Raisi.
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.
So far, none of them has offered any specifics, though all have promised a better economic situation for the country as it suffers from sanctions by the US and other Western nations over its nuclear program, which now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
The most prominent candidate remains Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former Tehran mayor with close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
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. Raisi won the 2021 election, after every major opponent found themselves disqualified.
Khamenei gave a speech last week alluding to qualities that Qalibaf’s supporters have highlighted as potentially signaling the supreme leader’s support for the speaker.
The election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over its arming of Russia in that country’s war on Ukraine.
Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others were killed in the May 19 helicopter crash in the far northwest of Iran. Investigations are continuing, though authorities say there’s no immediate sign of foul play in the crash on a cloud-covered mountainside.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai in the chaotic days after the country’s Islamic Revolution.
