About 80 candidates have registered to stand in Iran’s presidential election on 28 June, taking place against the backdrop of a growing confrontation with the west over Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme and UN access to its nuclear sites.
The winner will replace Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, has urged all sides not to add “nuclear weapons to the cauldron of the Middle East”. Grossi’s unsuccessful efforts to negotiate fuller access to the sites, including through a phone call on Friday with Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri, suggest no progress on that will be made at least until after the presidential vote.
European members on the IAEA board have tabled a censure motion against Iran, throwing a firecracker into Iranian politics. It is the first such motion for 18 months and Tehran has promised it will respond if it is passed.
The presidential election, with its themes of stability versus change, is in part a proxy for whether Iran should again open its economy to the west, or instead back self-sufficiency and resistance, a policy that centres on rejection of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The large number of candidates, some with slogans rather than a policy prospectus, is in part a product of Iran’s rejection of a party system.
The field will now be reduced by a 12-member “guardian council”, a panel of clerics and jurists overseen by the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who will decide on a final candidate list by 12 June.
To increase voter turnout, the council is being pressed to give Iranians a wider political choice than the last presidential elections in 2021, which recorded a record low turnout of 48.5%.
Seven candidates were cleared to stand that year, with three of them then standing down as part of pre-election pacts. Many others announced their candidature only to step aside for Raisi, the eventual winner and Khamenei’s clear favourite. Disqualification is not subject to appeal.
One test of the council’s relative openness this time will be whether the former speaker Ali Larijani, an experienced politician who moved to the centre and was banned from running in 2023, can join the race. It is said Larijani only announced his candidacy after he was given private assurances he would not be blocked.
Ironically, many of the candidates are promoting themselves on western social media, which is often frowned on as a subversive western tool.
Each candidate is allowed to make a brief speech after their candidacy is registered. One of the most critical was by Abbas Akhondi, who has been endorsed by some of the figures around the former president Hassan Rouhani. He urged Iran to open up, saying that “confinement has never been the fate and characteristic of the Iranian nation”.
But reformists have lost their allure in urban areas, where many Iranians do not believe the clerical regime backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will tolerate social change, pointing to the brutal suppression of dissent. In a sign of the continued repression, Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Nobel prizewinning dissident, faces a court hearing after she accused prison guards of sexually harassing female prisoners.
Among the candidates closest to the current leadership is Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of parliament and a former member of the Revolutionary Guards. In the 2005 race for president he came fourth; in 2013 a distant second to Hassan Rouhani; and in 2017 he withdrew in favour of Raisi.
His closest conservative rival may be Saeed Jalili, one of the first to register who, like Qalibaf, opposes the 2015 nuclear deal. A presidential candidate three times before, Jalili says he has enlisted the support of many Raisi loyalists, some who are likely to withdraw in favour of Jalili. He is a strong supporter of the compulsory hijab.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the populist president from 2005-2013, has registered, but was banned from standing in 2021 and it is hard to see him getting on to the ballot paper this time.
Hamideh Zarabadi, one of four women standing to run, has a PhD in engineering, and supports a free press, the return of military forces to their bases, and the release of all political prisoners. No rule prevents women from standing.
On the relatively moderate end of the spectrum Eshaq Jahangiri, a campaign manager for previous reformist presidential candidates and a vice-president under Hassan Rouhani, is standing.
