DUBAI: Iran’s hardliner former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday registered his candidacy for the presidential election this month, state media reported.

The Islamic republic goes to the polls on June 28 to replace former president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19.

“I am confident that all the country’s problems can be solved by making maximum use of national capacities,” he said after submitting his bid at the interior ministry.

However, he could be barred from the race: the country’s cleric-led Guardian Council — a body of 12 jurists — will vet candidates and publish the list of qualified ones on June 11.

Candidates’ registration process ends today; final list to be published on 11th

Candidate registration opened on Thursday and closes on Monday.

Other prominent figures, including moderate ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani and ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, have also registered their bids.

Ahmadinejad, 67, a former member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, was first elected as Iran’s president in 2005 and stepped down because of term limits in 2013.

His two straight terms were marked by a standoff with the West, especially over Iran’s nuclear programme and his incendiary remarks on Israel.

He was barred from standing in the 2017 election by the Guardian Council, a year after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned him that entering was “not in his interest and that of the country”.

A rift developed between the two after Ahmadinejad explicitly advocated checks on Khamenei’s ultimate authority. In 2018, in a rare criticism directed at Khamenei, Ahmadinejad wrote to him calling for “free” elections.

Khamenei had backed Ahmadinejad after his 2009 re-election triggered protests in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds arrested, rattling the ruling theocracy before security forces stamped out the unrest.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2024