TEHRAN (Iran News) – Interior Ministry announces presidential candidates. In a statement on Tuesday, Iran’s Interior Ministry officially announced the candidates who have been qualified by the Guardian Council to run for president, putting an end to a wave of speculations over who will be confirmed.
The statement said seven candidates were approved to run for office. The candidates are as following: Saeed Jalili, Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, Alireza Zakani, Seyed Amir Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi, Mohsen Mehralizadeh, Mohsen Rezaei, and Abdolnaser Hemmati.
The candidates are now allowed to start election campaigns and then stop campaigning 24 hours before the start of the election day.
The 13th presidential election will be held on June 18.
Currently serving as the head of the Judiciary, Iran’s chief justice was born in 1960. He is considered a principlist politician. Raeisi has served in various positions in the judicial system, such as deputy chief justice from 2004 to 2014, and attorney general from 2014 to 2016.
He is also a member of the Assembly of Experts tasked to elect and monitor the performance of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution. He was elected to the assembly for the first time in the 2006 election from South Khorasan province.
Raeisi is one of the politicians who is subject to the U.S and the European Union sanctions. He was blacklisted in November 2019.
He has stated that he is seeking to establish a “strong Iran” if elected president in the June 18 polls.
Gaining a reputation for countering the corrupt and the embezzlers in the Judiciary, he said that he is in the race to “dry the corrupt substrates from the root and turn inefficiencies into efficiencies.”
Raeisi considers himself “part the people, with the people and by the people,” and believes that with the help of the people, he can overcome the problems.
Mohsen Rezaei
Major General Mohsen Rezaei was born in 1954. He led the Islamic Revolution Guards Corp for 17 years, from 1980 to 1997. He has received the first grade Order of Fath by the Commander-in-Chief three times, holding a record among military officials.
Rezaei ran for president twice in 2009 and 2013, losing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani respectively.
Stating that today is not a day to promise but a day to act, he believes that Iran needs a new path.
“We are ready to bring happiness back to Iranian families,” he said at the press conference held after registering at the Ministry of Interior on Saturday to run for president.
The former IRGC chief said if he succeeds to win the presidency, his administration will be seeking to bring back economic stability.
“I’m not here to cover up the truth. We will tell everything to the people honestly,” he claimed.
Stating that he has come to “shield” people against difficulties and not to use the people as shields, Rezaei said that he has plans to bring welfare for the people.
