Six candidates, including the speaker of parliament, have been approved to run in this month’s Iranian elections to succeed President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month. The vote comes as the country faces serious domestic and international challenges, state media said on Sunday.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf and five other men were approved by the Guardian Council, a 12-person body that vets candidates, for the June 28 vote, according to state news agency IRNA, which quoted spokesman Mohsen Eslami. for the country’s electoral headquarters.
Ghalibaf, a retired pilot and former Revolutionary Guard commander, ran twice unsuccessfully for the country’s presidency and was mayor of the capital, Tehran. He became President of Parliament in 2020 following a legislative election.
The other candidates include former Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi; Saeed Jalili, former chief nuclear negotiator; and the current mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani.
The country’s next president will face internal and external problems. Deep economic problems, exacerbated by international sanctions, are fueling discontent among some Iranians who have demanded social and political freedoms as well as prosperity.
The largest recent uprising, led by women, broke out in 2022 after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody; she was accused of improperly covering her hair under the country’s hijab laws. Those protests grew to include demands for the end of clerical rule.
On the international front, the new president will also confront the “Axis of Resistance” that Tehran has adopted as a policy against the United States and Israel, including financing Hamas and Hezbollah, armed groups based in Gaza and Lebanon, and arming the USA. Houthis in Yemen, who have attacked cargo ships in the Red Sea.
A long shadow war between Iran and Israel came to light in April when Tehran launched a barrage of missiles and explosive drones at Israel in retaliation for a deadly attack on the Iranian embassy building in Damascus.
Beyond that, Iran has supplied Moscow with explosive drones that it has used in Ukraine to undermine that country’s ability to resist a full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022. That, in turn, has turned Tehran into an central actor in an indirect confrontation between the two countries. Kremlin and NATO countries, including the United States.
Iran’s next president faces critical decisions about the country’s status as a “threshold” nuclear state that could produce fuel for three or four bombs in short order. Last week, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran for its refusal to grant inspectors access to its uranium enrichment program.
Iran has said for years that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and that it is not pursuing a bomb. But in recent months, several senior Iranian officials have said it could review its nuclear doctrine if it faced an existential threat from other nuclear countries, namely Israel and the United States.
Raisi died along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian while traveling in the northwest of the country. The president had been seen as a possible successor to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his death has changed the dynamic of the debate over who could succeed Khamenei. One possible candidate is the supreme leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei.
While it was unclear how the June 28 elections will shape succession issues, the country’s leadership has taken steps after Raisi’s sudden death to project stability, emphasizing that the country’s governance will not be affected.