Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others see an opportunity, but it remains unclear who will be qualified to run by the Guardian Council.
Tehran, Iran – Controversial figures including Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, moderate Ali Larijani and ultra-conservative Saeed Jalili have said they will run in new elections following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.
Ahmadinejad, who served as president from 2005 to 2013, registered at the Interior Ministry along with dozens of others on Sunday, the day before the registration period closed.
The politician, who has been largely ignored after his controversial tenure in office, said he was simply listening to “calls from people across the country” to run again and was confident he could solve Iran’s domestic and international problems.
“Please don’t ask me political questions,” he told reporters with a smile when asked how he would react to being disqualified from running by the Guardian Council, the constitutional body that vets all candidates.
He registered and was barred from running in 2017 despite being urged not to by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but chose not to register for the 2021 election.
President Ahmadinejad’s administration was marked by economic recession with massive inflation and currency devaluation, and rising tensions over Iran’s nuclear program (which led to the imposition of multilateral sanctions on Iran).
His 2009 re-election sparked protests across the country, the Green Movement, amid allegations of vote fraud, which authorities denied with a crackdown.
Who else would you like to join the race?
Among the dozens of candidates who have announced their candidacy for the presidency are senior security official and former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, former three-time parliament speaker Ali Larijani, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakhani and former central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati.
Jalili currently serves as Iran’s supreme leader’s representative on the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and was Iran’s security chief from 2007 to 2013, at the height of tensions over the country’s nuclear program. He has previously run unsuccessfully for president three times.
Larijani is a conservative from a powerful family and is perhaps the only relatively moderate candidate who could attract a significant number of votes if approved by the Guardian Council after being disqualified in 2021.
Despite his previous disqualification, Larijani became the first major figure to announce his candidacy, campaigning in Tehran on Friday and releasing a dramatic video that included cinematic shots of Larijani on the campaign trail.
Voter turnout is expected to be an issue in this election as recent presidential and parliamentary elections saw the lowest voter turnout in the Iranian Republic’s nearly 45-year history.
The Iranian Parliament’s Research Center said on Sunday that a survey it conducted showed that 53.4 percent of respondents would vote in the June 28 presidential election, while 28.9 percent were still undecided.
That’s slightly higher than the 48% turnout that brought Raisi to power as president, and significantly higher than the 42% turnout in parliamentary elections announced in March.
The Guardian Council is scheduled to begin reviewing candidates over a six-day period starting Tuesday, after which the list of approved candidates is expected to be announced on June 11.
