June 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former president of Iran Mahmud Ahmadinejad has filed his candidacy this Sunday for the presidential elections on June 28 in a new attempt to return to the political front line after the country’s clerical authorities prevented him from participating in the 2017 and 2021 elections.
Ahmadinejad has delivered the relevant documentation at the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, in the country’s capital, Tehran, surrounded by dozens of supporters of the former president, according to the semi-official Iranian agency Mehr, at the beginning of the fourth day of presenting candidates for elections. declared out of necessity after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter accident on May 19.
Although Ahmadinejad currently meets the prerequisites to present his candidacy, it remains to be seen if he passes the screening of the Guardian Council, one of the most powerful organizations in the country, in charge of selecting the final candidates and known for eliminating all those who do not adhere to the doctrine of the Iranian clerical establishment, the true dominator of the country.
This represents a serious problem for Ahmadinejad, who fell from grace during the last years of his mandate (2005-2013) and who has since become a staunch critic of the authorities to the point that the Iranian supreme leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused him in 2018 of “behaving like the country’s enemies do.”
The former president is one of the most polarizing figures of the last decades of Iranian politics, even among conservatives. Known for the explosiveness of his speeches, during his term he proclaimed that the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York were orchestrated by the American authorities themselves and has denied on several occasions the existence of the Holocaust, a phenomenon “invented” to justify the creation of Israel.
But, above all, his name is associated with the controversial 2009 presidential elections in which he revalidated his mandate amid enormous popular protests in favor of the reformist candidates Mir Hosein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi, who denounced electoral fraud. The so-called Green Revolution resulted in between 30 and 70 deaths, according to official or opposition estimates, and more than 4,000 detainees.
Despite his constant clashes with the country’s highest authorities, Ahmadinejad remains relatively integrated within Iranian institutions as a member of the System Expediency Discernment Assembly, a body charged with resolving discrepancies between the Iranian Parliament and the Council of Justice itself. the Guardians, as well as advising the Iranian supreme leader on certain issues.
Add Comment