From the Liveblog of
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Iran okays 6 candidates for presidential race, but again blocks Ahmadinejad
Iran’s Guardian Council approves the country’s hardline parliament speaker and five others to run in the country’s June 28 presidential election following a helicopter crash that killed President Ebrahim Raisi and seven others.
The council again bars former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist known for the crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 re-election, from running.
The council’s decision represents the starting gun for a shortened, two-week campaign to replace Raisi, a hardline protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei once floated as a possible successor for the 85-year-old cleric.
The selection of candidates approved by the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists ultimately overseen by Khamenei, suggests Iran’s Shiite theocracy hopes to ease the election through after recent votes saw record-low turnout and as tensions remain high over the country’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, as well as the Israel-Hamas war.
The Guardian Council also continues its streak of not accepting a woman or anyone calling for radical change to the country’s governance.
The most prominent candidate remains Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former Tehran mayor with close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. However, many remember that Qalibaf, as a former Guard general, was part of a violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999. He also reportedly ordered live gunfire to be used against students in 2003 while serving as the country’s police chief.
The Guardian Council disqualifies Ahmadinejad, the firebrand, Holocaust-denying former president. Ahmadinejad increasingly challenged Khamenei toward the end of his term and is remembered for the bloody crackdown on the 2009 Green Movement protests. He was also disqualified in the last election by the panel.
