Seven candidates have been allowed to run in Iran’s presidential elections on June 18, and none of them is a prominent reformist or pragmatist.
The interior ministry on Tuesday announced the list handed to it the night before by the Guardian Council, a 12-member constitutional vetting body overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that is tasked with evaluating potential candidates’ qualifications.
Incumbent judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi; secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei; former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili; deputy parliament speaker Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi; former vice president Mohsen Mehralizadeh; central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati; and lawmaker Alireza Zakani received a green light from the council.
Among the 585 other hopefuls who were disqualified by the council were supreme leader adviser and former parliament speaker Ali Larijani – a pragmatist conservative who has veered more to the centre in recent years – and current reformist First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri.
Former two-term President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also, as expected by many, disqualified. While signing up, he said he would boycott the elections if he was prevented from running.
Tuesday’s results only solidify conservative Raisi’s position as by far the top candidate, as Larijani and Jahangiri were seen as the only candidates who could have a remote chance of challenging Raisi in an election expected to have low voter turnout amid public disillusionment.
Several candidates have already resigned in favour of Raisi and more are expected to follow suit before election day.
Raisi released a short video saying since he heard about the final list, which was leaked by hardline news website Fars on Monday night, he has been trying to lobby high-level officials to qualify other candidates in order to make the election more “competitive”.
Unconfirmed reports on Tuesday also said outgoing moderate President Hassan Rouhani sent a letter to the supreme leader asking him to allow reformist and moderate candidates to be qualified in order to level the playing field.
