Iran’s Guardian Council approved only seven of 592 presidential candidates: they excluded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran’s Interior Ministry said on Tuesday that among the seven approved candidates attending the presidential elections is the ultra-conservative Ebrahim raisi, head of the judiciary, and that several key candidates were rejected.

The official list of candidates for the presidential election of June 18 leaves out the former speaker of Parliament and current advisor to the Supreme Leader, Ali Lariyani, and the first vice-president, Eshaq Yahanguiri, whose vetoes of the Council of Guardians were not expected. Another candidate who has not passed the filter is the former Conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who warned during a recent interview with the agency EFE that if voter turnout was opposed, it would be “very low”.

Disqualified candidates have the opportunity to appeal until Tuesday at midnight.

Besides Raisi, the other accepted candidates They are: the secretary of the Discernment Council Mohsen Rezai; the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Saíd Yalilí; MP Amir Hosein Qazizadeh Hashemi; the head of the Parliament’s Research Center, Alireza Zakani; the governor of the Central Bank, Abdolnaser Hemati; and former vice president Mohsen Mehralizadeh.

This confirms the dominance of conservative candidates in these elections and what reformists have no strong numbers, since Yahanguiri started as the principal of this sector after the decision of the head of diplomacy Mohamad Yavad Zarif not to appear.

The only ones that can be considered as part of the reformist bloc and moderate are Hematí and Mehralizadeh, but they do not have a high profile. The agency Fars noted that the ruling “shows that the Council of Guardians did not sacrifice the law for expediency and that in its selection process it emphasized the backgrounds of people regardless of rank” .

The favorite of these presidential elections, as had been assumed even before announcing his candidacy, is Raisi, an ultra-conservative cleric who could eventually become the supreme leader.

Raisi was in the presidential past the main rival of current President Hasan Rouhani, who is not eligible for re-election after two consecutive terms.

In favor of Raisi, important general and former defense minister Hosein Dehqan and former oil minister Rostam Qasemí resigned last night.

Of the 592 people who registered as candidates, only about 40 candidates were examined, the others not meeting the requirements of the Guardian or the Constitutional Council, composed of six jurists and six conservative ecclesiastics.

(With information from AFP and EFE)

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