Protests in 2022
The six candidates were selected by the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, an unelected body dominated by conservatives and responsible for overseeing the electoral process, from among 80 personalities who submitted their candidacy.
Among those qualified are the conservative President of Parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, and Saïd Jalili, the former ultraconservative nuclear negotiator. Also selected were Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, the ultraconservative head of the Martyrs’ Foundation, and cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a former interior minister.
The only reformer competing is Massoud Pezeshkian, an MP from the northwestern city of Tabriz and former health minister. Aged 69, the latter is known for his outspokenness. He had criticized the lack of transparency of the authorities on the case of Mahsa Amini, the young woman whose death in detention had provoked a vast protest movement at the end of 2022.
Reformists and moderates pushed aside
On the other hand, the Council disqualified the populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who at the age of 67 wanted to return to the post of president which he occupied from 2005 to 2013. He had already been excluded from the presidential elections of 2017 and 2021. Another veteran of the Republic Islamic, Ali Larijani, former president of Parliament considered moderate, was also rejected, as he had been in 2021. The Guardian Council did not publicly justify its choices.
In the 2021 election, this body only selected seven candidates out of the 592 applicants, invalidating many reformist and moderate personalities. Which opened the way for Ebrahim Raïssi, the candidate from the conservative and ultraconservative camp, easily elected in the first round. Only 49% of Iranian voters participated in this election, the lowest rate for a presidential election since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Four women had submitted a candidacy file this year but none of them was qualified, as is the case for all presidential elections since the beginning of the Islamic Republic.
Premature election
Unlike most countries, the president is not the head of state, who is the Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 85 years old and has been in office for 35 years. Elected for four years, the president nevertheless has an important role in directing the government and its policies, the post of Prime Minister not existing.
The presidential election was made necessary by the death at age 63 of Ebrahim Raïssi in the northwest of the country on May 19, in the company of seven other people including the head of diplomacy, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
