“Historic opportunity”: in Iran, will the next president be a reformer?

In Iran, six candidates, among the 80 who presented themselves, are now in the running for the early presidential election scheduled for June 28, following the death of Ebrahim Raïssi on May 19. The “finalists,” which included a single reformer, were selected by the Constitutional Guardian Council, an unelected, conservative-dominated body charged with overseeing the country’s electoral process.

The four candidates were all disqualified by this body, seen as a major obstacle to the renewal of political life. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, no woman has been able to run for president.

For the moderated newspaper Khorasan, “each of the candidates, however, represents one of the political currents” major within the system. The government authorized “a competitive election”.

Thus, the daily specifies that the mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, and the ultraconservative head of the Martyrs’ Foundation, Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, are in the running on behalf of the outgoing government of Ebrahim Raïssi, while the cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former Minister of the Interior, represents the moderate current. Former ultraconservative nuclear negotiator Saïd Jalili