BICOM

Critics of the clerical regime in Tehran threw their weight behind Hassan Rowhani ahead of Friday’s presidential election in a move likely to alarm the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Last month, the all-powerful Guardian Council, headed by Khamenei approved just eight candidates for the election. Although they are hardly opponents of Iran’s theocracy, Rowhani and Mohammed Reza Aref were considered the sole candidates openly critical of the Tehran leadership’s policies. In a televised debate last Friday, Rowhani challenged the regime’s priorities, saying “It is good to have centrifuges running, provided people’s lives and livelihoods are also running.” Like all candidates though, Rowhani is thought to support Iran’s belligerent attitude towards nuclear development.

On Monday, Aref pulled out of Friday’s race, apparently at the request of former-President Mohammed Khatami in an attempt to unite opponents of the regime behind a single candidate and avoid splitting their vote. Yesterday Khatami and another former-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani publicly endorsed Rowhani’s candidacy. Khatami said, “I ask all, in particular the reformists … to see Dr Rowhani’s candidacy as a suitable chance for their demands to be met.”

Meanwhile, there appears to be little unity among the conservative candidates likely to cooperate closely with Tehran’s religious leadership. Former parliamentary speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel pulled out of the race this week but did not endorse any of his rivals. The campaign of Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili is reported to be floundering at the expense of Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. All of which brings about the prospect of a second round of voting between two top candidates including Rowhani, a scenario which the clerical regime hoped to avoid, as it would threaten a repeat of the large-scale Green Movement protests following allegations of fraud at the 2009 election. The protests were brutally suppressed by Iran’s security forces.