BICOM

The list of candidates for Iran’s presidential election on 14 June was announced yesterday, in a move that appeared to consolidate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s grip on power.

Iran’s Guardian Council, headed by Khamenei must approve all candidates prior to the election. Yesterday, the final list of eight candidates was announced from a total of 686 nominees who had applied to run. Most notable was the exclusion of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, considered the protégé of the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Although hardly opponents of Iran’s theocracy, both are considered to be at odds with the hard-line clerical regime in Tehran. Mashaei is aligned with Ahmadinejad who has publicly disagreed with Khamenei over recent months while Rafsanjani, a late applicant as a presidential candidate, questioned the regime’s handling of the 2009 presidential election, which was dominated by widespread allegations of electoral fraud. This led to mass street protests which were brutally suppressed by Iranian security forces and the leaders of the protest movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest for the last two years. The exclusion of Rafsanjani and Mashaei is being widely interpreted as a move by Khamenei to disqualify any candidate who could become the focus of support for regime opponents or proponents of reform. The Times comments that as a result of yesterday’s decision, “Iran’s presidential election next month is set to be a farce.”

The remaining presidential candidates include Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former-foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, ex-commander of the Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai and former parliamentary speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel. All are considered to be conservatives likely to cooperate closely with Tehran’s religious leadership.