Iran’s hardliners and conservatives search for optimal candidate to face President Hassan Rouhani in May election
With less than three months before Iran’s Presidential election, hardliners and conservatives are stepping up their maneuvers over who will face the centrist Hassan Rouhani.
A campaign is building behind Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric and former Attorney General who is now the custodian of the leading religious foundation Astan Quds Razavi and a member of the Assembly of Expects. He is the son-in-law of Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Mashhad Friday Prayer leader and Grand Imam of the Imam Reza shrine, where the Astan Quds Razavi foundation is based.
A senior member of the hardline Steadfastness Front, Amir Hossein Gazizadeh, said Raisi is the “fittest candidate” for the May election. However, he added that Front members attempted last week to “persuade Ebrahim Raisi to run in the elections, but did not succeed”.
Mohsen Rezaei, the Secretary of the Expediency Council and 2013 candidate, declared his intentions with the statement that if asked by the conservative faction Popular Front of Islamic Revolutionary Forces to stand, he “will think about it”.
The Popular Front was created in December 2016 to propose a single conservative candidate. In 2013, Rouhani unexpectedly won a first-round victory when three conservative hopefuls weakened each other and split votes.
Much attention is also being paid to the declaration of Hamid Baghaei, Vice President in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration, that he will run. Baghaei, who was arrested in June 2015 on corruption charges, said he is “completely independent of individuals, groups, parties and political factions”.
Despite Baghaei’s assertion of independence, speculation is widespread that he is a stand-in for Ahmadinejad, the President from 2005 to 2013. Last summer, the Supreme Leader told Ahmadinejad that he would be barred from any candidacy.
Abdolreza Davari, a leading Ahmadinejad ally, said on Tuesday, “I have no doubt that we will begin Saturday, May 20, 2017, after hearing news of engineer Hamid Baghaei’s victory in the 12th Presidential elections.”
And Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, Ahmadinejad’s former Chief of Staff and once considered his heir-apparent, broke years of silence to assert, “The candidacy of Baghaei is perhaps considered a joke by some gentlemen, just like how Ahmadinejad’s candidacy was considered a joke in 2005.”
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/02/iran-hamid-baghaei-presidential-candidate-ahmadinejad.html#ixzz4ZUYIpUKJ
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/02/iran-hamid-baghaei-presidential-candidate-ahmadinejad.html#ixzz4ZUXnFtKR
(h/t to Iran Tracker for translations)
Hamid Baghaei, a declared candidate for May’s Presidential election, with then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
