DUBAI: Iran’s Guardian Council on Sunday approved the country’s hard-line parliament speaker and five others to run in the country’s June 28 presidential election following a helicopter crash that killed President Ebrahim Raisi and seven others.
The council again barred former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist known for the crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 re-election, from running.
The most prominent candidate remains Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former Tehran mayor with close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013.