Iranian media reports say the country’s Guardian Council, which oversees elections and legislation, has approved six candidates to run for president in snap elections to be held later this month after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
IRNA reported on June 9 that Iran's Election Headquarters has announced the final list of presidential candidates approved by the Guardian Council.
Mohsen Eslami, the spokesperson for Iran's Election Headquarters, revealed the names of the qualified candidates for the 14th presidential election on Sunday.
The Guardian Council, a 12-member election supervisory body, finalized the list of the approved candidates earlier in the day and submitted it to the Interior Ministry.
Former justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, former health minister Massoud Pezeshkian, head of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf have reportedly been cleared to run for the June 28 elections.
Meanwhile, Western media outlets report that among those approved just only one reformist candidate, Massoud Pezeshkian, while the remaining five candidates are principlists (the principlists constitute the main right-wing/conservative political movement in Iran).
Pezeshkian, 69, has reportedly been outspoken against the government’s lack of transparency during nationwide protests which were triggered by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.
Meanwhile, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was previously disqualified from entering the presidential races in 2017 and 2021, was again excluded from the list.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, was first elected as Iran's president in 2005 and stepped down because of term limits in 2013.
He was barred from standing in the 2017 election by the Guardian Council, a year after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned him that entering was “not in his interest and that of the country”.
A rift reportedly developed between the two after Ahmadinejad explicitly advocated checks on Khamenei's ultimate authority.
In 2018, in rare criticism directed at Khamenei, Ahmadinejad wrote to him calling for “free” elections.
Others including moderate ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Vahid Haghanian, a former commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards, were also barred from standing.
Four women had also registered their candidacy but were disqualified, as has been the case for all presidential elections since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s presidential elections were originally slated for 2025 but were brought forward following Raisi’s unexpected death on May 19.
