John Gambrell
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's hardline parliament speaker on Monday registered to run in the country's June 28 presidential election, the last day candidates could run.
Mohamed Bagher Qalibaf's candidacy brings a prominent candidate with close ties to the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards to the polls to replace President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19 along with seven other people.
The election comes at a time of rising tensions between Iran and the West over Iran's burgeoning nuclear program, its arms sales to Russia for its war with Ukraine and a widespread crackdown on dissent. Meanwhile, Iran's backing of proxy militias across the Middle East has come into the spotlight as Yemen's Houthi rebels attack shipping in the Red Sea over Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Qalibaf, 62, became speaker after multiple failed presidential bids and 12 years as leader of the Iranian capital, during which he helped build Tehran's subway and modern skyscrapers. He was recently re-elected speaker.
But many know Qalibaf for his role as a general in the Revolutionary Guards, where he supported a violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999. He also reportedly ordered the use of live ammunition against Iranian students in 2003 while he was Iran's police chief.
Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013, and withdrew from the 2017 presidential race.
Speaking to reporters after the registration, Qalibaf said he would continue on the same path as Raisi and the late Guards Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who is revered by many in Iran since being killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2020.
Qalibaf stressed that he would not allow “another mismanagement” in the country, referring to the poverty and price pressures affecting Iranians as the country remains tense under international sanctions.
“If I do not register, the work that (Raisi's) People's Government and the Revolutionary Assembly started to solve the people's economic problems, and which is now in the implementation stage, will remain incomplete,” Qalibaf said.
But it's unclear what those plans mean in practice as Iran's currency, the rial, once again approaches 600,000 to the dollar, trading at 32,000 rials to the dollar when Iran signed the nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.
Iran's parliament plays a secondary role in governing the country but can exert pressure on the presidential administration when deciding the annual budget and other major legislation. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, has the final say on all matters of state importance.
A trained pilot, Qalibaf served in the paramilitary Guard during the country's bloody war with Iraq in the 1980s. After the conflict, he headed the Guard's construction wing, Khatam al-Anbia, for several years, overseeing reconstruction efforts.
Qalibaf later served as commander of the Guard's air force and co-signed a letter to reformist President Mohammad Khatami in 1999 during student protests in Tehran against the government's closure of reformist newspapers and subsequent crackdown by security forces. The letter warned Khatami that the Guard would act unilaterally if he did not agree to quell the protests.
Violence during the protests has left several people dead, hundreds injured and thousands arrested.
Qalibaf went on to head Iran's police force, modernizing it and introducing the country's 110 emergency number. But then recordings of meetings between Qalibaf and members of the Basij, the Guard's volunteer wing, were leaked, claiming that he ordered shootings against demonstrators in 2003 and praising the violence used during the 2009 Green Movement protests.
Among those already signed up are hardline former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fellow former parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Abdolnaser Hemmati, the former governor of Iran's Central Bank, who is also running in 2021.
Candidates may yet emerge: The country's acting president, Mohammed Mokbel, a former backbencher who has already been seen meeting with Khamenei, may be the front-runner, while former reformist Khatami has also been mentioned as a possible candidate.
But Iran's Shiite theocratic state is unlikely to allow either Ahmadinejad or Khatami to run. The final list of candidates will ultimately be decided by the 12-member Guardian Council of clerics and jurists overseen by Khamenei, which has never before allowed women or anyone calling for radical changes to the way the country is run to run.
___
Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.