Iranian officials approved six candidates to run in Friday’s election to replace the president who died in a helicopter crash last month, including a heart surgeon, a former Tehran mayor and a cleric suspected of executing political prisoners.
Candidates have given up on Iran Headscarf enforcementThey spoke of U.S. sanctions that have stymied the country’s economy and publicly Criticism of the government It was an unusual move in Iranian politics amid a series of debates. However, high levels of voter apathy in the country and divisions among conservative leaders make predicting the outcome difficult.
While Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has ultimate authority over major state affairs, the president sets domestic policy and can influence foreign policy.
Iran’s Guardian Council, a panel of 12 jurists and clerics, whittled down an initial list of 80 presidential candidates to six, disqualifying seven women, a former president and many other government officials. Four candidates remain in the race.
Two of the candidates – Amir Hossein Ghazizad Hashemi and Alireza Zakhani – dropped out of the race to consolidate support among conservative voters. If no candidate wins a majority on Friday, a runoff will be held on July 5 between the top two winners.
The latest opinion poll released earlier this week by the conservative government-run Imam Sadiq University showed Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian leading with about 24.4% of the vote, Mohammad Bakr Ghalibaf with 23.4% and Sayyed Jalili with 21.5%. The other candidates received less than 5% of the vote, and nearly a fifth of voters are undecided.
Here’s some information about the four presidential candidates still in the race.
Mohammad Bakr Ghalibaf
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is the current speaker of parliament and former mayor of Tehran, the capital of Iran. The retired pilot and commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has run for president several times but failed.
He is also known for his role in violent government crackdowns on students, first in 1999 and again in 2003, when he reportedly directed authorities to fire live ammunition at students while serving as the country’s police chief.
Mr Ghalibaf has faced charges of financial corruption while mayor of Tehran and moral hypocrisy over his family’s lavish spending abroad. He denies the allegations.
The conservative politician, who is reportedly close to Khamenei, campaigned on a promise to reduce government inefficiency and criticized the government for losing money by ineffectively enforcing oil sanctions.
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran expert and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences and Education at Missouri University of Science and Technology, said Ghalibaf tried to portray himself as the “establishment candidate,” siding with the elites in the debates and positioning himself as the only one with the experience and ability to lead.
Masoud Pezeshkian
The only reformist candidate on the ballot, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, is a heart surgeon who fought in the Iran-Iraq war and has also served as a member of parliament and Iran’s health minister. After his wife and child died in a car accident, he raised his other children alone and never remarried. This, as well as his identity as an Azerbaijani, a minority in Iran, endeared him to many voters.
Reformist candidates were mostly disqualified from running in the 2021 presidential election and the March parliamentary election. Experts say Dr. Pezeshkian’s inclusion may have been intended to boost turnout among reformist voters and Iranians who boycotted the March parliamentary election. The government considers high turnout crucial to the legitimacy of the election.
Dr Pezeshkian, who has the backing of former President Mohammad Khatami, has expressed a willingness to engage in nuclear talks with the West and framed the debate as an economic issue.
Sayyid Jalili
Sayyid Jalili, an ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator known as a “living martyr” for losing a leg in the Iran-Iraq war, leads the far-right Paydari Party, which represents the country’s most hardline ideological views on domestic and foreign policy.
Jalili said he did not think Iran needed to negotiate with the United States to achieve economic success. Boroujerdi said that while Jalili may be the candidate closest to Khamenei, he presented the public with a “completely unrealistic” assessment of Iran’s economic capabilities.
“He is adamantly against not only any nuclear deal, but any kind of opening up by the West,” Boroujerdi said.
Mustafa Pourmohammadi
Mustafa Pourmohammadi, the only cleric in the election, was a former counterintelligence chief and a member of a committee that oversaw the execution of thousands of political prisoners. Avon Prison in 1988He downplayed his role in the execution.
He was outspoken and articulate during the debate, saying Iran’s biggest problem is that the government has lost the support of the people and cannot inspire them to participate in the election.
Pourmohammadi has been critical of Iran’s support for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine, saying Iran has not gained enough from supplying weapons to the Kremlin.
He also cited Former President Donald J. Trump on the campaign trail“We’ll see what happens when Trump takes office,” he said during a recent televised debate. “We have to be ready for negotiations.”
In a campaign poster in Purmohammadi, he and Trump stare into each other’s eyes. The poster reads: “The one who can stand up to Trump is me.”
