The following is the profile of the presidential candidates in Iranwhose population will vote tomorrow, Friday:
Mohammad Baquer Qalibaf
Mohammad Baquer Qalibaf, former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and ally of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is the current speaker of the hardline-dominated parliament.
He previously ran unsuccessfully for the presidency twice and was forced to withdraw from a third bid in 2017 to avoid a split hardline vote in Raisi’s failed initial bid.
In 2005, Qalibaf resigned from the Guard and ran for president.
Following his failed campaign, he took over as mayor of Tehran with the support of the supreme leader, a position he held for 12 years.
In 2009, Qalibaf took credit as mayor of Tehran for helping quell months of bloody unrest that shook the establishment after a presidential vote that opposition candidates said was rigged to ensure the re-election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. .
To civil rights activists, he is known as someone who crushed protests as head of the National Police, personally beating protesters in 1999, and also played an active role in suppressing unrest in 2003.
Saeed Jalili
Saeed Jalili is a hardline diplomat who lost his right leg in the 1980s while fighting for the Guard in the Iran-Iraq war.
Holder of a doctorate in Political Science, Jalili
declared a pious believer in Iran’s “velayat-e faqih,” or rule by supreme jurisprudence, an Islamic system that provides the basis for Khamenei’s position.
Appointed by Khamenei, Jalili served as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for five years starting in 2007, a position that automatically made him chief nuclear negotiator.
Jalili, a former deputy foreign minister, was appointed by Khamenei in 2013 to the Expediency Council, a body that mediates disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council.
Massoud Pezeshkian
Massoud Pezeshkian, an Iranian legislator of Azeri ethnicity, is the only moderate candidate approved by the Guardian Council and supported by the reformist camp.
Its prospects depend on attracting millions of disillusioned voters who stayed home in elections since 2020.
A doctor by profession, Pezeshkian served as health minister under reformist President Mohammad Khatami from 2001 to 2005 and has held a seat in parliament since 2008.
Pezeshkian openly criticized the Islamic Republic for its lack of transparency over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman in 2022 that sparked several months of unrest.
He was excluded from the 2021 presidential election.
Mostafa Pourmohammadi
Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the only cleric in the race, served as interior minister during the first term of hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from 2005 to 2008.
He was Deputy Minister of Intelligence from 1990 to 1999, and human rights groups alleged that he played a role in the assassinations inside Iran of several prominent dissident intellectuals in 1998.
He did not comment on the allegations, but a statement from the Ministry of Intelligence in 1998 said: “A small number of irresponsible, misguided and dishonest ministry agents, who were probably puppets of others, committed these murders in the interests of foreigners.”
Human Rights Watch, in a 2005 report, documented Pourmohammadi’s alleged role in the execution of hundreds of political prisoners in the Iranian capital in 1988.
Alireza Zakani
Alireza Zakani, Tehran’s hardline mayor and former lawmaker, was disqualified in 2013 and 2017 from running for president.
Zakani, a former commander of the Guard-affiliated Basij volunteer militia, withdrew from the 2021 presidential race to endorse Raisi’s candidacy.
But in a post on X, Zakani wrote: “In the 2024 elections, I will stay and compete until the end to continue (Raisi’s) path.”
Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi
Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, current vice president and director of the Martyrs Foundation, is a hardline former legislator who received a low vote count in the 2021 presidential election; he completed a report from the Reuters news agency.
