Iranian ex-President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has joined a growing list of overwhelmingly hard-line candidates in a presidential election later this month to replace the late Ebrahim Raisi, who died along with Iran’s foreign minister in a helicopter crash near the Azerbaijani border in mid-May.
Ahmadinejad announced his intention to run on June 1, and state media reported on June 2 that the 67-year-old and longtime enemy of reformists had registered.
His announcement follows similar pledges by a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who is under U.S. sanctions, Vahid Haghanian, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, and the longtime former speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani.
Ahmadinejad, Larijani, and other potentially competitive contenders were barred from running against Raisi in the 2021 presidential election by vetting institutions that routinely ban moderates and other challengers from Iran’s tightly controlled elections.
Candidate registration for the June 28 election closes on June 3. The Guardians Council will announce the final list of candidates on June 11 after it has completed its vetting procedures.
Before his death, the former prosecutor Raisi was widely seen as a potential successor to 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate political and religious power under Iran’s clerically dominated system.
Ahmadinejad served two terms between 2005 and 2013, and his second term was dogged by fierce protests over his disputed reelection in 2009 and a brutal crackdown. He appeared increasingly willing to challenge Khamenei publicly as his presidential tenure mounted.
Haghanian was designated for sanctions by the United States in 2019 for his role in Khamenei’s “inner circle responsible for advancing the regime’s domestic and foreign oppression.”
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a news release announcing the sanctions that Haghanian had been “referred to as the supreme leader’s right hand.”
Zakani was approved to run in the last presidential election but withdrew after some of his rivals nicknamed him the “cover candidate” of Raisi.
Former lawmaker Zohreh Elahian, who has been designated by the European Union for sanctions, on June 1 became the first woman to successfully apply to run.
Former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili on May 30 became the first political heavyweight to register his candidacy.
Other candidates have also applied.
Iran’s presidential and other elections are plagued by low turnout that has worsened in recent years, spurred by disqualifications and crackdowns on dissent.
Rights groups have complained of an intensified clampdown on public expressions of discontent since Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several others died in the helicopter crash in a mountainous region of northwestern Iran while returning from an official visit to Azerbaijan.
Raisi had been accused of serving as a prosecutor for an “execution committee” that sent thousands of political prisoners and regime opponents to their deaths in the late 1980s.
source : Radio Free Europe