DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s Mother or father Council on Sunday authorized the rustic’s hard-line parliament speaker and 5 others to run within the nation’s June 28 presidential election following a helicopter crash that killed President Ebrahim Raisi and 7 others.The council once more barred former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist identified for the crackdown that adopted his disputed 2009 re-election, from working.The council’s resolution represents the beginning gun for a shortened, two-week marketing campaign to exchange Raisi, a hard-line protege of Preferrred Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as soon as floated as a imaginable successor for the 85-year-old cleric.The choice of applicants authorized by way of the Mother or father Council, a panel of clerics and jurists in the long run overseen by way of Khamenei, suggests Iran’s Shiite theocracy hopes to ease the election via after contemporary votes noticed record-low turnout and as tensions stay top over the rustic’s swiftly advancing nuclear program, in addition to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The Mother or father Council additionally endured its streak of now not accepting a lady or any person calling for radical exchange to the rustic’s governance.
The marketing campaign will most probably come with are living, televised debates on Iran’s state-run broadcaster. Applicants additionally promote it on billboards and be offering stump speeches to again their bids.Thus far, none of them has introduced any specifics, despite the fact that all have promised a greater financial state of affairs for the rustic because it suffers from sanctions by way of the U.S. and different Western countries over its nuclear program, which now enriches uranium nearer than ever to weapons-grade ranges.
Such issues of state stay the overall resolution of Khamenei, however presidents prior to now have leaned both towards engagement or war of words with the West over it.Probably the most distinguished candidate stays Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former Tehran mayor with shut ties to the rustic’s paramilitary Modern Guard. On the other hand, many remember the fact that Qalibaf, as a former Guard basic, was once a part of a violent crackdown on Iranian college scholars in 1999. He additionally reportedly ordered are living gunfire for use in opposition to scholars in 2003 whilst serving as the rustic’s police leader.
Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the 2017 presidential marketing campaign to fortify Raisi in his first failed presidential bid. Raisi received the 2021 election, which had the bottom turnout ever for a presidential vote in Iran, after each primary opponent discovered themselves disqualified.Khamenei gave a speech final week alluding to qualities that Qalibaf’s supporters have highlighted as doubtlessly signaling the ideal chief’s fortify for the speaker.But Qalibaf’s position in crackdowns is also considered otherwise after years of unrest that experience gripped Iran, each over its in poor health economic system and the mass protests sparked by way of the 2022 loss of life of Mahsa Amini, a tender girl who died after being arrested for allegedly now not dressed in her headband, or hijab, to the liking of safety forces.Different applicants come with Saeed Jalili, former Jalili, former senior nuclear negotiator, who ran in 2013, and registered in 2021 earlier than retreating to again Raisi. Tehran mayor Ali Reza Zakani additionally withdrew in 2021 to again Raisi. Mostafa Pourmohammadi is a former minister of justice. Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, Raisi’s vice chairman, ran within the 2021 presidential elections and got here in final with just below 1 million votes.
Masoud Pezeshkian is the one reformist candidate amongst a slate of hardliners, and isn’t observed as having a lot probability.The Mother or father Council disqualified Ahmadinejad, the firebrand, Holocaust-questioning former president. Ahmadinejad more and more challenged Khamenei towards the tip of his time period and is remembered for the bloody crackdown at the 2009 Inexperienced Motion protests. He was once additionally disqualified within the final election by way of the panel.It additionally barred former Iranian Central Financial institution leader Abdolnasser Hemmati, who ran in 2021, and Eshaq Jahangiri, who served as vice chairman underneath average President Hassan Rouhani, whose management reached a nuclear take care of the West.
The election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over its arming of Russia in that nation’s conflict on Ukraine. Its fortify of armed forces proxy forces during the broader Center East has been more and more within the highlight as Yemen’s Houthi rebels assault ships within the Crimson Sea over the Israel-Hamas conflict within the Gaza Strip.Raisi, Iranian Overseas Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others have been killed within the Would possibly 19 helicopter crash within the a long way northwest of Iran. Investigations are proceeding, despite the fact that government say there’s no fast signal of foul play within the crash on a cloud-covered mountainside.Raisi was once the second one Iranian president to die in administrative center. In 1981, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai within the chaotic days after the rustic’s Islamic Revolution.
