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. </s> More than 1,600 candidates have filed to run in the Iranian presidential election as the official registration period ended on April 15. Among the last-minute entrants for the May 19 election was 55-year-old Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who arrived at the Interior Ministry just before the deadline. First Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri, 60, also was a late entrant.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Weekday Magazine. </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> 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 Guardian Council has gone through the 1,500 registered candidates for the upcoming presidential election and whittled it down to six candidates who can run. Obviously this includes incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, with his main challenges a pair of hardliners, former Attorney General Ebrahim Raisi and Tehran Mayor Bagher Qalibaf.

The other three candidates approved are Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, former Vice President Mostafa Hashemitaba, and former Culture Minister Mostafa Mirsalim. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had also registered, was denied a spot.

Ahmadinejad was widely expected to be barred from running, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had warned him against filing in the first place. Analysts saw the move as an attempt to try to force a compromise, in which his candidate of choice, Hamid Baghiae, would be approved.

That didn’t work, however, and Baghiae didn’t make the cut either, with the Guardian Council reportedly concerned by the embezzlement charges he’d faced in the past. The expectation is that the vote will basically come down to Rouhani and Raisi, with Raisi the favored candidate of Khamenei.
• US Seeks Saudi Assurances on Limiting Yemen Civilian Casualties Ahead of Arms Sales - April 20th, 2017 </s> The 5th day now has turned out to show its new names, where heavy-weight figures came finally to submit their names to the Elections Headquarters operating from Interior Ministry in Tehran's Fatemi Square. The final day's rather unsurprising registration was definitely of Tehran's mayor and former IRGC general. Mr. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who said in a statement earlier this month that he was not invited by any parties to run for presidency – interpreted by many as a refrain from registration – found himself endorsed by the national forum of newly-established Popular Front of Islamic Revolutionary Forces just a day later, which provided Mr. Ghalibaf a reason for coming to the fore and run for presidency.

Ghalibaf's registration would be just to recognize the calls by Popular Front and the mayor would abandon campaign just before the Election Day in May 19 to support Mr. Raeisi as other candidates and possibly Saeid Jalili, an important name in the Principlist camp, would also follow the suit, to invest heavily in Raeisi, the Custodian of Astan Quds, in the battle with President Rouhani.

Notable among the other registrations is by Rouhani's first VP, Mr. Ishaq Jahangiri. His movement in the last day would puzzle the public of supporters of the government, since Reformist-Moderates would finally coalesce on Rouhani as their single nomination for the elections. Mr. Jahangiri would choose to do what Mr. Mohammad Reza Aref had done back in 2013 Presidential Elections on the demand and recommendation of late Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami.

Mohammad Hashemi, a former IRIB head and brother of late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was also another prominent candidate nominating for the presidential race. He asserted that he is running independently and would not step aside in favor of anyone.

Mohsen Rohami is a cleric and a major figure of the Association of Combatant Clerics, which is a reformist clerical party and in 1980 acted as a left wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran's political system. He told reporters that he would not be considered as a secondary nomination to Rouhani's wider sweep among the Reformists, but would act as independent in the campaign.

From among the names endorsed by the Popular Front, former Tehran MP Mehrdad Bazrpash also appeared in Interior Ministry, but told reporters he had refrained from running for presidency. He officially announced this late Saturday when the registration was being closed. Mr. Bazrpash added that he would himself support any final candidate of the general camp of the Principlists and from among those endorsed by the Popular Front.

The final exhaustive list shows a rise in the number of registered individuals in Presidential Elections. This number had more than doubled compared to that in 2013 Presidential Elections of June. 1636 people submitted their names to the Headquarters. Only a handful would be qualified by the Guardian Council as the final candidates to launch their campaign after April 27.

SH/3952682 </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> 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, Iran (AP) — Iran has opened registration for those hoping to run in the May 19 presidential race.

The official IRNA news agency said Tuesday that prospective candidates can register through the end of Saturday. They will then be vetted by the Guardian Council, a clerical body that will announce a final list of candidates by April 27.

President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, is eligible to run for another term. Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Hamid Baghaei, a close ally of former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have announced plans to run.

The election is expected to serve as a referendum on the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, under which Iran agreed to curb its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri submit their candidacies as registration closes. The final list of approved candidates will be announced on April 27.