DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has registered to run in the June 28 presidential election, called after the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month, Iranian state television reported on Sunday.
However, he could be excluded from the race: the country’s cleric-led Guardian Council will vet candidates and publish the list of qualified candidates on June 11.
Ahmadinejad, a former member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, was first elected president of Iran in 2005 and resigned in 2013 due to term limits.
The Guardian Council barred him from running in the 2017 elections, a year after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned him that entry was “not in his interest and that of the country.”
A rift emerged between the two after Ahmadinejad explicitly advocated checks on Khamenei’s ultimate authority.
In 2018, in a rare criticism of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad wrote to him calling for “free” elections.
Khamenei had backed Ahmadinejad after his re-election in 2009 sparked protests in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds arrested, throwing the ruling theocracy into turmoil before security forces led by the elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) halted the unrest.
(Reporting by Elwely Elwelly and Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Frances Kerry)