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Iran’s Guardian Council has approved the hardline speaker of the country’s parliament and five others to run in the country’s June 28 presidential election, following a helicopter crash that killed the president. Ebrahim Raisi and seven others.
The council again barred former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an outspoken populist known for the crackdown that followed his disputed Re-elected in 2009from running.
The council’s decision is the launching pad for a shortened, two-week campaign to replace Raizi, a staunch protégé of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was once floated as a possible successor to the 85-year-old supreme leader.
The selection of candidates approved by the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists ultimately controlled by Khamenei, suggests Iran’s Shiite theocracy hopes to ease the election after recent polls saw record low turnout and as tensions remain high around the country’s rapidly advancing nuclear weapons program, as well as the Israel-Hamas war.
The Guardian Council also continued its streak of not accepting a woman or anyone calling for radical change in the country’s governance.
The campaign is likely to include candidate debates broadcast live on Iran’s state television. They also advertise on billboards and offer speeches to support their offers.
So far, none of them have offered any details, although all have promised a better economic situation for the country as it suffers sanctions from the US and other Western nations over its nuclear program, which is now enriching uranium closer than ever to weapon class levels.
Such matters of state remain Khamenei’s ultimate decision, but presidents in the past have tended to either engage or confront the West on this issue.
The most prominent candidate remains Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 62, a former mayor of Tehran who has close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. However, many remember that Ghalibaf, as a former Guards General, was part of a violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999. He is also reported to have ordered the use of gunfire against students in 2003 while he was chief of police in the country.
Ghalibaf ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the presidential campaign in 2017 to support Raisi in his first unsuccessful bid for the presidency. Raisi won the 2021 election, which saw the lowest turnout for a presidential vote in Iran, after every main challenger was disqualified.
Last week, Khamenei gave a speech hinting at qualities that Ghalibaf’s supporters highlighted as potentially signaling the supreme leader’s support for the speaker.
Yet Ghalibaf’s role in the crackdown may be viewed differently after years of turmoil engulfed Iran over its ailing economy and the mass protests sparked by 2022. the death of Mahsa Aminia young woman who died after being arrested for not wearing a headscarf or hijab, which pleased the security forces.
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The Guardian Council disqualified Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-doubting former president. Ahmadinejad increasingly challenged Khamenei towards the end of his term and is remembered for a bloody crackdown on The 2009 Green Movement protests. He was also disqualified in the last election by the panel.
The election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over the issue arming Russia in that country’s war against Ukraine. Its support for proxy militia forces across the Middle East is increasingly in the spotlight as Yemen’s Houthi rebels attack ships in the Red Sea because of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Raisi, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and others were killed in the May 19 helicopter crash in far northwestern Iran. Investigations are ongoing, although authorities say there are no immediate signs of foul play in the cloud-covered mountainside crash.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb attack killed President Mohamed Ali Rajai in the chaotic days following the country’s Islamic Revolution.
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