TEHRAN - Iran’s reformist first vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, on Tuesday pulled out of this week’s presidential election and endorsed the incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, ISNA news agency reported.

“I will vote for Mr Rouhani in the presidential election,” Jahangiri said as he announced he was withdrawing his candidacy.

“I have completed my historic duty and, together with you, I will vote for Rouhani to help continue on the path to progress for this country,” he told a crowd of several thousand people gathered in the southern city of Shiraz.

“Vote for Rouhani because he is the man for difficult situations... I ran as candidate to make the voice of reformists heard,” said Jahangiri.

His decision comes one day after Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf withdrew from the race, paving the way for a head-to-head battle between Rouhani and conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi.

Jahangiri, a 60-year-old confidante of the moderate president, was a surprise last-minute entry for Friday’s election.

It was assumed Jahangiri ran to back up Rouhani in pre-election debates and he said at his registration that he stood “side-by-side” with the president who is seeking a second four-year mandate. </s> Iran's first Vice President and presidential election candidate Eshaq Jahangiri announced on Tuesday to withdraw from the presidential race in order to back incumbent President Hassan Rouhani.

"I will use all my power to support Rouhani and to support his programmes," Jahanigiri said in a statement, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Jahanigiri, the reformist hopeful, urged all his supporters to vote for Rouhani, said the report.

He further expressed hope that Rouhani will win the election by a landslide so he could improve the country's future.

Concerns over "democracy, freedom, economy and the country's progress" will enable officials to overcome difficulties, he added.

On Monday, Tehran's conservative Mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, also said that he withdrew from the presidential race to back another conservative candidate, Ebrahim Raisi.

On April 21, of the 1,636 registered candidates, six qualified, including three principalists, better known as conservatives, as well as two centrists and one reformist, to compete for the four-year presidential term.

Raisi is Rouhani's sole major conservative rival who hopes not to lose his current sovereignty.

Over 56 million Iranians are eligible electorates for the May 19 election. </s> Image copyright EPA Image caption Eshaq Jahangiri (L) said he had done his "duty" and would vote for Hassan Rouhani (R)

A reformist candidate in Iran's presidential election has pulled out to smooth the path for the moderate incumbent, Hassan Rouhani.

The withdrawal of Mr Rouhani's ally, Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri, from Friday's poll had been expected.

On Monday, Tehran's hardline mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf withdrew his candidacy and urged his supporters to back conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi.

He is now seen as the main threat to Mr Rouhani, who is seeking a second term.

A recent poll had put support for the two hardliners at 52% and for Mr Rouhani at about 42%. Another had Mr Rouhani at 29%, Mr Qalibaf at 12% and Mr Raisi at 11%, with 28% respondents undecided and 20% declining to answer.

If none of the four candidates remaining wins more than 50% of the vote, a run-off will be held on 26 May.

Mr Jahangiri, 60, announced his withdrawal in a speech to several thousand people gathered in the southern city of Shiraz on Tuesday, saying he had run as a candidate to "make the voice of reformists heard".

"I have completed my historic duty and, together with you, I will vote for Rouhani to help continue on the path to progress for this country," he said.

"Vote for Rouhani because he is the man for difficult situations," he added.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Ebrahim Raisi (L) was endorsed by Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (R) on Monday

Mr Jahangiri played an important role for Mr Rouhani in the heated televised debates held in the weeks running up to the election, during which he defended the president's record and criticised his conservative rivals.

Mr Rouhani has faced a significant challenge from conservatives because the landmark nuclear deal with world powers that he negotiated in 2015 has not triggered the economic recovery he predicted.

Mr Raisi is a close ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and heads a multi-billion-dollar charitable foundation that manages donations to Iran's holiest shrine in the city of Mashhad.

The former prosecutor has promised to build a self-sufficient "resistance economy", create millions of jobs and triple cash hand-outs to the poor. </s> Hashemitaba calls on Iranians to vote for Rouhani

Baku, Azerbaijan, May 17

 

 By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:

 

 Mostafa Hashemitaba, a candidate in Iran’s May 19 presidential election, has called on Iranians to cast votes in the favor of incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, ISNA news agency reported.

 

 However, Hashemitaba did not say if he is going to withdraw from the presidential race.

 

 So far, two presidential nominees have dropped out of the country’s presidential election.

 

 Iranian First Vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri has withdrawn in favor of Hassan Rouhani with pro-conservative nominee Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in favor of conservative-backed cleric Ebrahim Raeisi. </s> Eshaw Jahangiri has promised to vote for Hassan Rouhani, who is running for his second term (Reuters) </s> An Iranian panel charged with vetting candidates approved the country’s incumbent president and five challengers but disqualified former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from running in next month’s presidential election, state television reported Thursday.

The decision by the Guardian Council means that President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, will face off against a field that includes two prominent hard-liners: Ebrahim Raisi, who is considered close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

The Guardian Council, a cleric-dominated body that vets candidates, said it had compiled a final list of candidates earlier Thursday and that the Interior Ministry would announce their names by Sunday.

The panel controls elections and must approve all laws passed by parliament. It has never allowed a woman to run for president and routinely rejects political dissidents and others calling for dramatic reform.

Other presidential candidates who made the cut, according to an Interior Ministry statement carried by state TV, include moderate Senior Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri, former conservative culture minister Mostafa Mirsalim, and former pro-reform vice-president Mostafa Hashemitaba.

Ahmadinejad, who remains a deeply polarizing figure even among Iranian hard-liners, had shocked the country by registering last week. Khamenei had previously urged him not to run.

Ahmadinejad was president from 2005 to 2013, and was best known abroad for his incendiary rhetoric toward Israel, his questioning of the scale of the Holocaust and his efforts to ramp up Iran’s nuclear program.

He said upon registering that he was doing so to support his former Vice-President Hamid Baghaei, who also failed to receive approval to run.

“He was an unwanted guest in the election,” Tehran-based political analyst Soroush Farhadi said of Ahmadinejad’s disqualification. He predicted the former president would nonetheless remain politically active during the campaign to create a “quasi-opposition face for himself” for the future.

Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a close ally of Ahmadinejad, downplayed the two candidates’ exclusion, saying on social media that Ahmadinejad and Baghaei had only registered out of “national, religious and revolutionary duty.”

“Thank god, the Guardian Council removed the duty from their shoulders,” he wrote.

More than 1,600 people registered to run for the May 19 election.

Under Iran’s clerically overseen system, the president is subordinate to Khamenei, who is Iran’s top decision-maker and has the final say on all matters of state. Khamenei appoints half the Guardian Council’s members.

Rouhani, 68, is hoping voters will deliver him a second term to see out his promises of greater personal freedoms at home and openness to the wider world as he works to turn around Iran’s sagging economy — a top priority for many voters.

The election will be in many ways a referendum on his administration’s negotiation of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. That agreement gave Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for limits to its nuclear program, but has been assailed by hard-liners who believe Iran gave too much away in exchange for too little.

While reliable polling information is not widely available, most political observers see Rouhani as the current front-runner even though he has been unable to significantly turn around Iran’s slumping economy. Every incumbent since Khamenei himself took the presidency in 1981 has won re-election.

Rouhani, though no radical, has the support of many reform-minded Iranians. Khamenei himself also might favour a second term for Rouhani despite his closeness to more hard-line candidates.

“Iranian presidents tend to become much weaker in their second terms, with a key cause being their greater susceptibility to control by the supreme leader and his institutions,” Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran expert at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote this week. “This helps explain Khamenei’s possible abstention from active support for the hard-line candidates.”

Rouhani’s toughest challenge could come from Raisi, 56, a hard-line cleric and professor of Islamic law who has promised to fight poverty and corruption if he’s elected. Many hard-liners have rallied around Raisi, who got a boost last year when Khamenei appointed him head of an Islamic charity that holds extensive business interests in Iran.

He has held several judiciary positions, including serving as attorney general from 2014 to 2016, and is mentioned as a possible successor for Khamenei himself. </s> Tehran: More than 1,600 candidates have registered to run for Iranian presidency as the registration for May 19 presidential election closed on Saturday.

Tehran's Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and first Vice President Es'haq Jahangiri also registered on Saturday for the election.

Addressing reporters after his registration, the principlist Qalibaf challenged as "unrealistic" the incumbent President Hassan Rouhani's remarks about his administration's acceptable economic performance over the past four years, Xinhua news agency cited Press TV.

Jahangiri said unity is needed to overcome challenges, citing unemployment as among the country's main problems.

The most high-profile candidates running for the top post are President Hassan Rouhani, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi.

The Iranian Guardian Council of Constitution, a clerical body that oversees elections, will start to assess the qualification of the applicants from Sunday and will announce an approved list by April 27.

A candidate should basically be an Iranian national, prudent and capable of taking on leadership duties, and should a believer and committed to the Islamic Republic of Iran's fundamentals and also official religion of the country.

According to Iran's Interior Ministry, the approved candidates will launch their presidential campaign on April 28. </s> Supporters of the two leading candidates in Iran’s presidential election took to the streets as official campaigning came to an end.

But despite festive scenes ahead of Friday’s vote, there has been tension between the moderate and reformist forces and hardline fundamentalists with fiery exchanges.

It has turned into a tight race between incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, described as a pragmatist, and the hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi.

One young woman in Tehran told Euronews: “We’ve gone forward with hope and we think moderation is the best thing.

“We want it to happen. We want our candidate to win. We want to have hope.”

One young man said: “I’m holding both photos (Rouhani and Raisi) to say we’re all Iranians, that unity matters and no matter who we choose the important thing is to vote and choose by logic.”

As the campaigning came to an end there was an intervention by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday.

He slammed the heated tone of the election campaign, describing it as “unworthy”.

Some observers read that as a thinly veiled attack on President Rouhani and his attacks on Raisi. </s> Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Mayor of Tehran, shows his ink-stained finger after registering his candidacy for the upcoming presidential elections at the ministry of interior in the capital Tehran on April 14, 2017 (AFP Photo/STR)

Tehran (AFP) - Registration for next month's Iranian presidential election closed on Saturday, with more than 1,600 hopefuls signing up, including a last-minute entry by Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

The 55-year-old conservative mayor had given mixed signals about whether he would make a third bid for the presidency, but showed up at the interior ministry just before the deadline for registration.

There was also a surprise last-minute entry from first vice-president Eshaq Jahangiri, a close confidante of President Hassan Rouhani who registered on Friday.

It is assumed Jahangiri, a 60-year-old reformist, is running to offer an alternative in case Rouhani is disqualified by the Guardian Council, which vets the candidates. Others speculate he could be trying to raise his profile ahead of a more concerted bid in 2021.

Rouhani, a politically moderate cleric who has stabilised the economy and overseen a partial rapprochement with the West, is widely seen as the man to beat, although there is little polling in Iran and past elections have thrown up major surprises.

His main challenger is considered to be hardline cleric and judge Ebrahim Raisi, 56, who also signed up on Friday.

Almost all will be disqualified over the coming fortnight by the Guardian Council, which is controlled by religious conservatives.

The council has never permitted a woman to run.

Around half a dozen candidates are normally approved, with the campaign set to start on April 28 and the vote on May 19.

Ghalibaf was the runner-up to Rouhani in 2013. He is a war veteran, former Revolutionary Guards commander and police chief, who was picked by a grouping of conservatives as one of their top choices last week, along with Raisi.

With much of the focus this year on Iran's stagnant economy, he told reporters at the registration that he would create five million jobs and more than double Iran's revenues.

The biggest surprise from this week's registration was the appearance of former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 60, who shocked everyone by signing up against the advice of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In an expected event, Eshaq Jahangiri withdraws his candidacy and urges his supporters to vote for incumbent president Hassan Rouhani.