Iran’s Guardian Council on Sunday approved the country’s hard-line 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 barred 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 hard-line 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 continued its streak of not accepting a woman or anyone calling for radical change to the country’s governance.—AFP
