TEHRAN — Seven candidates will compete on June 18 to win the Iranian presidential election, as every candidate started his own campaign promising to improve the difficult economic and living conditions that the country is currently experiencing.
The candidates used different methods for their campaigns like hanging posters and large murals in the streets, using social media and newspapers or promoting themselves on the state TV, which is the most effective means of affecting voters'' decisions, negatively or positively, because of its large number of views at the local level.
Five candidates represent the group of the current government critics of the conservative fundamentalist movement, who are the former presidential candidate, the current head of the judiciary, Ibrahim Raisi, the Secretary of the Expediency Council, Mohsen Rezaei, the former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, Ali Reza Zakani and Amir Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi.
On the other hand, the Central Bank governor, the moderate candidate, and technocrat, Abdelnasser Hemmati, competes for the presidency alongside the only reformist candidate in this election, Mohsen Mehr Alizadeh.
Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former parliament speaker Ali Larijani were barred from running. The announcement carried by state television puts Raisi, who is linked to mass executions in 1988, in the dominant position for the upcoming vote.
He’s the best-known candidate of the seven hopefuls, with opinion polling previously showing his anti-corruption campaign drew Iranian support. He's also believed to be a favorite of Iran's 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But perhaps most notable was who Iran's Guardian Council barred from running. Chief among them was former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, a conservative who allied with President Hassan Rouhani in recent years.
Larijani had been positioning himself as a pragmatic candidate who would back Rouhani’s signature 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That accord is now in tatters as diplomats in Vienna try to negotiate a return of both Iran and the US to the agreement.
Larijani seemingly signaled he wouldn't fight the decision. “I have done my duty before God and the dear nation, and I am satisfied,” Larijani wrote on Twitter. “Thank you to all those who expressed their gratitude and I hope you will participate in the elections for the promotion of an Islamic Iran.”
Also barred was former hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Rouhani’s senior Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, a reformist. Ahmadinejad ignored a warning from Khamenei in 2017 and registered, only to be rejected then as well by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel under Khamenei.
According to the Iranian election law, the Supreme Constitutional Court studies candidacy applications to support or reject every candidate's eligibility according to the voting mechanism among its 12 members, six of whom are religious scholars and the other half are legal scholars.
The candidates of the fundamentalist conservative movement, in their first appearance through the first television debate, criticized the performance of the current President Hassan Rouhani's government, especially on the economic level, inflation, the deterioration of the citizens living conditions and the depreciation of the national currency in recent years.
Observers believe that regardless of the mutual accusations between the two parties, the chances of the conservative fundamentalist movement's candidates, especially Ibrahim Raisi, are more likely of winning the elections, especially since he has in his popular account more than 15 million votes he obtained in his first participation in the previous presidential elections.
The president of Iran is elected for a four years term that is renewable only once. It is the country's highest directly elected official, the chief of the executive branch, and the second most important position after the Supreme Leader. — Agencies
