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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s Guardian Council on Sunday accepted the nation’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 operating.
The council’s determination represents the beginning gun for a shortened, two-week marketing campaign to exchange Raisi, a hard-line protege of Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as soon as floated as a potential successor for the 85-year-old cleric.
The choice of candidates accepted by the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists finally overseen by Khamenei, suggests Iran’s Shiite theocracy hopes to ease the election by way of after current votes noticed record-low turnout and as tensions stay excessive over the nation’s quickly advancing nuclear program, in addition to the Israel-Hamas struggle.
The Guardian Council additionally continued its streak of not accepting a lady or anybody calling for radical change to the nation’s governance.
The marketing campaign will probably embrace stay, televised debates on Iran’s state-run broadcaster. Candidates additionally promote on billboards and provide stump speeches to again their bids.
To this point, none of them has supplied any specifics, although all have promised a greater financial scenario for the nation because it suffers from sanctions by the U.S. and different Western nations over its nuclear program, which now enriches uranium nearer than ever to weapons-grade ranges.
Such issues of state stay the ultimate determination of Khamenei, however presidents prior to now have leaned both towards engagement or confrontation with the West over it.
Essentially the most distinguished candidate stays Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former Tehran mayor with shut ties to the nation’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Nevertheless, many keep in mind that Qalibaf, as a former Guard basic, was a part of a violent crackdown on Iranian college college students in 1999. He additionally reportedly ordered stay gunfire for use in opposition to college students in 2003 whereas serving because the nation’s police chief.
Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the 2017 presidential marketing campaign to help 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 main opponent discovered themselves disqualified.
Khamenei gave a speech final week alluding to qualities that Qalibaf’s supporters have highlighted as probably signaling the supreme chief’s help for the speaker.
But Qalibaf’s function in crackdowns could also be seen in another way after years of unrest which have gripped Iran, each over its ailing economic system and the mass protests sparked by the 2022 dying of Mahsa Amini, a younger lady who died after being arrested for allegedly not sporting her scarf, or hijab, to the liking of safety forces.
Different candidates embrace Saeed Jalili, former Jalili, former senior nuclear negotiator, who ran in 2013, and registered in 2021 earlier than withdrawing to again Raisi. Tehran mayor Alireza 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 slightly below 1 million votes.
Masoud Pezeshkian is the one reformist candidate amongst a slate of hardliners, and isn’t seen as having a lot probability.
The Guardian 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 on the 2009 Inexperienced Motion protests. He was additionally disqualified within the final election by the panel.
It additionally blocked former speaker of parliament speaker Ali Larijani, a conservative with sturdy ties to Iran’s former comparatively average President Hassan Rouhani. It was the second election in a row wherein Larinjani was barred from operating.
Former Iranian Central Financial institution chief Abdolnasser Hemmati, who ran in 2021, and Eshaq Jahangiri, who served as vice chairman beneath average President Hassan Rouhani, had been additionally disqualified.
The election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over its arming of Russia in that nation’s struggle on Ukraine. Its help of militia proxy forces all through the broader Center East has been more and more within the highlight as Yemen’s Houthi rebels assault ships within the Pink Sea over the Israel-Hamas struggle within the Gaza Strip.
Raisi, Iranian International Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others had been killed within the Might 19 helicopter crash within the far northwest of Iran. Investigations are persevering with, although authorities say there’s no instant signal of foul play within the crash on a cloud-covered mountainside.
Raisi was the second Iranian president to die in workplace. In 1981, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai within the chaotic days after the nation’s Islamic Revolution.
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