EGN NEWS DESK
Six candidates, together with the speaker of Parliament, have been accredited to run within the Iranian election this month to succeed President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash final month. The vote comes at a second when the nation faces acute home and worldwide challenges, state media stated on Sunday.
The speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, and 5 different males had been accredited by the Guardian Council, a 12-person physique that vets candidates, for the balloting on June 28, in accordance with the state information company IRNA, which cited Mohsen Eslami, spokesman for the nation’s election headquarters.
Mr. Ghalibaf, a retired pilot and former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, has run twice unsuccessfully for the nation’s presidency and is a former mayor of the capital, Tehran. He turned speaker of Parliament in 2020 following a legislative election.
The different candidates embody a former inside minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi; Saeed Jalili, a former chief nuclear negotiator; and the present Tehran mayor, Alireza Zakani.
The nation’s subsequent president will probably be confronted with issues at dwelling and overseas. Deep financial troubles, exacerbated by worldwide sanctions, are fueling discontent amongst some Iranians who’ve demanded social and political freedoms in addition to prosperity.
The largest latest rebellion, led by girls, erupted in 2022 after a younger girl, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody; she was accused of improperly overlaying her hair underneath the nation’s hijab legal guidelines. Those protests grew to incorporate calls for for an finish to clerical rule.
On the worldwide entrance, the brand new president may even face the “Axis of Resistance” that Tehran has adopted as its coverage in opposition to the United States and Israel, together with by funding Hamas and Hezbollah, armed teams based mostly in Gaza and Lebanon, and by arming the Houthis in Yemen, who’ve attacked cargo ships within the Red Sea.
An extended shadow conflict between Iran and Israel broke into the open in April when Tehran launched a volley of missiles and exploding drones at Israel in retaliation for a lethal strike on an Iranian Embassy constructing in Damascus.
Beyond that, Iran has provided Moscow with exploding drones that it has utilized in Ukraine to sap that nation’s means to withstand a full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022. That has, in flip, made Tehran a central participant in an oblique confrontation between the Kremlin and NATO nations, together with the United States.
The subsequent Iranian president faces essential choices concerning the nation’s standing as a “threshold” nuclear state that would produce gasoline for 3 or 4 bombs briefly order. Last week, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog company censured Iran over its refusal to grant inspectors entry to its uranium enrichment program.
Iran has for years stated that its nuclear program is for peaceable functions and that it’s not pursuing a bomb. But in latest months, a number of senior Iranian officers have stated that it might revise its nuclear doctrine if it confronted an existential risk from different nuclear nations, specifically Israel and the United States.
Mr. Raisi died together with the overseas minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, whereas touring within the nation’s northwest. The president had been seen as a attainable successor to the nation’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his demise has shifted the dynamics within the debate over who might succeed Mr. Khamenei. One attainable candidate is the supreme chief’s son Mojtaba Khamenei.
While it was unclear how the June 28 election will form questions of succession, the nation’s management has taken steps after Mr. Raisi’s sudden demise to challenge stability, emphasizing that the governing of the nation won’t be affected.
