Iran’s former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reveals his identification card to the media as he arrives on the Inside Ministry to register his title as a candidate for the June 28 presidential election, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 2 2024. | Photograph credit score: AP
Iran’s Guardian Council on Sunday permitted the speaker of the nation’s hardline parliament and 5 others to run within the June 28 presidential election, following a helicopter crash that killed President Ebrahim Raisi and 7 others.
The council once more banned former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a populist firebrand recognized for the crackdown that adopted his disputed 2009 re-election, from operating.
The council’s choice marks the beginning sign for a shortened two-week marketing campaign to exchange Raisi, a hardline protégé of Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was as soon as held up as a doable successor to the 85-year-old cleric.
The choice of candidates permitted by the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists finally overseen by Khamenei, means that Iran’s Shiite theocracy hopes to facilitate the elections after current votes noticed document turnout and as tensions stay being excessive as a result of speedy restoration of the nation. the development of the nuclear program, in addition to the battle between Israel and Hamas.
The Guardian Council additionally continued its streak of not accepting a girl or anybody who known as for a radical change within the nation’s governance.
The marketing campaign will seemingly embrace dwell televised debates of the candidates on Iran’s state broadcaster. In addition they promote on billboards and provides speeches to help their affords.
Up to now, none of them have supplied particular particulars, though all have promised a greater financial state of affairs for the nation, which is affected by sanctions from the USA and different Western nations for its nuclear program, which now enriches uranium to a degree nearer than ever. to the extent of weapons. ranges.
Such issues of state stay Khamenei’s last choice, however presidents prior to now have leaned towards compromise or confrontation with the West on the matter.
Probably the most outstanding candidate stays Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former mayor of Tehran with shut ties to the nation’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Nevertheless, many do not forget that Qalibaf, as a former Guard basic, was a part of a violent crackdown towards Iranian college college students in 1999. He additionally reportedly ordered the usage of dwell firearms towards college students in 2003, whereas serving because the nation’s police chief.
Iran’s hardline parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf emerges on the finish of a information convention underneath a portrait of Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after registering his title as a candidate for the June 28 presidential election within the Ministry of the Inside, in Tehran, Iran. Monday, June 3, 2024. | Photograph credit score: AP
Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the 2017 presidential marketing campaign to help Raisi in his first unsuccessful presidential bid. Raisi received the 2021 election, which had the bottom turnout ever seen in a presidential election in Iran, in spite of everything main opponents had been disqualified.
Khamenei gave a speech final week alluding to qualities that Qalibaf supporters have highlighted as potential indicators of the supreme chief’s help for the speaker.
Nevertheless, Qalibaf’s function within the crackdown could also be seen in a different way after years of unrest that has gripped Iran, each over its weakened financial system and mass protests sparked by the 2022 dying of Mahsa Amini, a younger girl. who died after being arrested for allegedly not carrying garments. her headband, or hijab, to the liking of the safety forces.
The Guardian Council disqualified Ahmadinejad, the firebrand former president who questions the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad more and more challenged Khamenei in the direction of the top of his time period and is remembered for the bloody crackdown on the Inexperienced Motion protests of 2009. He was additionally disqualified within the final election by the panel.
The election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over arms provides to Russia in that nation’s battle towards Ukraine. Its help for militia forces throughout the Center East has more and more been within the highlight as Yemen’s Houthi rebels assault ships within the Purple Sea over the battle between Israel and Hamas within the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Raisi, Iranian Overseas Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others died within the Could 19 helicopter crash in far northwest Iran. Investigations proceed, though authorities say there are not any rapid indicators of foul play within the crash on a cloud-shrouded mountainside.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in workplace. In 1981, a bomb explosion killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai within the chaotic days after the nation’s Islamic Revolution.
