A former speaker of the Iranian parliament, the Islamic Consultative Assembly, yesterday registered to run in the country’s upcoming presidential election, becoming the first high-profile candidate to potentially back the policies of the outgoing administration that reached a tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
The decision by former Iranian lawmaker Ali Larijani, who served as parliament speaker from 2008 until last year, came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election.
While a panel overseen by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is to ultimately approve candidates, Larijani has over his decades in government maintained close ties to the cleric, while also alligning himself with the relatively moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Photo: AFP
Reporters in Tehran watched Larijani, 63, register at the Iranian Ministry of Interior, which oversees elections.
He waved to onlookers after completing the process, his face covered with a blue mask as Iran continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Larijani, a former commander in the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard, previously served as Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, as well as the head of Iran’s state broadcaster.
Under former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was by the West perceived as a hard-liner, Larijani served as secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council and as a senior nuclear negotiator.
Larijani’s family includes prominent members of Iran’s theocracy, with his cleric brother once serving as the head of the Iranian judiciary. His father was a prominent ayatollah.
Larijani had an active role in signing a 25-year strategic agreement with China earlier this year.
On Friday, as a sign of respect, Larijani reportedly asked permission to run from high-ranking clerics in the city of Qom, Iran’s religious center.
Within Iran, candidates exist on a political spectrum that broadly includes hard-liners, who want to expand Iran’s nuclear program; moderates, who hold onto the “status quo”; and reformists, who want to change the theocracy from within.
Those calling for radical change find themselves blocked from running for office by the Iranian Guardian Council, a 12-member panel that vets and approves candidates under Khamenei’s watch.
“Like outgoing President Rouhani, Larijani is someone Khamenei trusts to represent Iran without compromising the regime’s basic tenets of religious supervision over society and independence from foreign powers,” said Barbara Slavin, acting director at the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington.
A clear candidate has yet to emerge within the reformists. Some have mentioned Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, although he later said that he would not run after a scandal over a leaked recording in which he offered frank criticism of the Revolutionary Guard and the limits of the civilian government’s power.
At the same time Larijani registered, so did Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the eldest son of late former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, a member of the Islamic City Council of Tehran, has been described as a reformist by political commentators.
Several other candidates have prominent backgrounds in the Revolutionary Guard, which is answerable only to Khamenei.
Hard-liners have increasingly suggested a former military commander should be president given the country’s problems, something that has not happened since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the purge of the armed forces that followed.
Ahmadinejad also registered Wednesday. Although his attempt to run in 2017 was ultimately blocked after Khamenei criticized him, the supreme leader this year did not warn him off.
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