Six candidates, together with the speaker of Parliament, have been authorised to run within the Iranian election this month to succeed President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash final month. The vote comes at a second when the nation faces acute home and worldwide challenges, state media stated on Sunday.
The speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, and 5 different males have been authorised by the Guardian Council, a 12-person physique that vets candidates, for the balloting on June 28, in accordance with the state information company IRNA, which cited Mohsen Eslami, spokesman for the nation’s election headquarters.
Mr. Ghalibaf, a retired pilot and former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, has run twice unsuccessfully for the nation’s presidency and is a former mayor of the capital, Tehran. He grew to become speaker of Parliament in 2020 following a legislative election.
The opposite candidates embody a former inside minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi; Saeed Jalili, a former chief nuclear negotiator; and the present Tehran mayor, Alireza Zakani.
The nation’s subsequent president will likely be confronted with issues at house and overseas. Deep financial troubles, exacerbated by worldwide sanctions, are fueling discontent amongst some Iranians who’ve demanded social and political freedoms in addition to prosperity.
The biggest latest rebellion, led by girls, erupted in 2022 after a younger girl, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody; she was accused of improperly masking her hair beneath the nation’s hijab legal guidelines. These protests grew to incorporate calls for for an finish to clerical rule.
On the worldwide entrance, the brand new president may also face the “Axis of Resistance” that Tehran has adopted as its coverage in opposition to the US and Israel, together with by funding Hamas and Hezbollah, armed teams primarily based in Gaza and Lebanon, and by arming the Houthis in Yemen, who’ve attacked cargo ships within the Purple Sea.
A lengthy shadow struggle between Iran and Israel broke into the open in April when Tehran launched a volley of missiles and exploding drones at Israel in retaliation for a lethal strike on an Iranian Embassy constructing in Damascus.
Past that, Iran has equipped Moscow with exploding drones that it has utilized in Ukraine to sap that nation’s means to withstand a full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022. That has, in flip, made Tehran a central participant in an oblique confrontation between the Kremlin and NATO nations, together with the US.
The subsequent Iranian president faces crucial choices concerning the nation’s standing as a “threshold” nuclear state that might produce gasoline for 3 or 4 bombs in brief order. Final week, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog company censured Iran over its refusal to grant inspectors entry to its uranium enrichment program.
Iran has for years stated that its nuclear program is for peaceable functions and that it’s not pursuing a bomb. However in latest months, a number of senior Iranian officers have stated that it may revise its nuclear doctrine if it confronted an existential menace from different nuclear nations, particularly Israel and the US.
Mr. Raisi died together with the international minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, whereas touring within the nation’s northwest. The president had been seen as a attainable successor to the nation’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his dying has shifted the dynamics within the debate over who may succeed Mr. Khamenei. One attainable candidate is the supreme chief’s son Mojtaba Khamenei.
Whereas it was unclear how the June 28 election will form questions of succession, the nation’s management has taken steps after Mr. Raisi’s sudden dying to challenge stability, emphasizing that the governing of the nation is not going to be affected.
