Six candidates, including the parliament speaker, have been approved to run in Iran's elections this month to replace President Ibrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month. State media reported Sunday that the vote comes at a time when Iran faces serious challenges both at home and abroad.
Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf and five others have been approved to stand in the June 28 vote by the 12-member Supervisory Council, which vets candidates, state news agency Iran News quoted Mohsen Eslami as saying.
Ghalibaf, a former pilot and former commander in the Revolutionary Guards, ran unsuccessfully twice for Iran's presidency and is a former mayor of the capital, Tehran. He became speaker of parliament in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
Other candidates include former interior minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, former chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and current Tehran mayor Alireza Zakhani.
Iran's next president will face challenges both at home and abroad. Serious economic problems, exacerbated by international sanctions, have fueled discontent among a segment of the Iranian population that wants not just prosperity but social and political freedoms.
The largest women-led uprising in recent years erupted after the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in 2022. She had been accused of covering her hair in violation of the country's hijab law. These protests expanded to include calls for an end to clerical rule.
On the international front, the new president will also be confronted with Tehran's “axis of resistance” policy towards the US and Israel, which includes funding the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah based in Gaza and Lebanon, and providing weapons to Yemen's Houthi rebels, who attacked a cargo ship in the Red Sea.
The long-running shadow war between Iran and Israel began openly in April when Tehran fired a volley of missiles and explosive drones at Israel in retaliation for a deadly attack on the Iranian embassy building in Damascus.
Moreover, Iran has supplied explosive drones to Moscow, which it plans to use in Ukraine to weaken the country's ability to resist a full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. As a result, Iran has assumed a central role in the indirect conflict between the Kremlin and NATO countries, including the United States.
Iran's next president faces crucial decisions about the country's status as a “threshold” nuclear power, capable of producing fuel for three or four nuclear bombs on a short notice. Last week, the U.N. nuclear watchdog condemned Iran for refusing to allow inspectors access to its uranium enrichment program.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful and that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapon, but in recent months several senior Iranian officials have said the country might reassess its nuclear policy if it faced an existential threat from other nuclear powers, specifically Israel and the United States.
Raisi died while traveling in the northwest of the country with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian. The president was seen as a possible successor to the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his death has shifted the dynamics of debate over who should succeed him. One contender is the supreme leader's son, Mojtaba Khamenei.
It is unclear how the June 28 elections will affect the succession issue, but the country's leadership has stressed that it has taken steps to create a sense of stability since Raisi's sudden death and that it will not affect the country's governance.