Iran votes for new president. Who are the four candidates?

Iranians went to the polls Friday to elect a new president, just over two months after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.

Four candidates remained serious contenders heading into election day: Iran’s Parliament Speaker and former military commander Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Former top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, former justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi and Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who previously served as vice president of parliament.

“There is a consensus that the three serious candidates are the conservatives Ghalibaf and Jalili and so-called reformer Pezeshkian,” said Foundation for Defending Democracy Senior Fellow and Iran expert Behnam Ben Talebu. 

Two other conservatives dropped out on Thursday, but neither of them were serious presidential candidates, with polls showing they got 2 percent of the vote. Candidates dropping out to rally support behind one pick is not uncommon, according to Treta Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. 

To win the presidency, a candidate must win a majority of votes, not a plurality. If no candidate tops 50 percent, the top two candidates will move to a run-off election in July. 

While the election brings a veneer of democracy to Iran, Iran’s president does not have the final say on any major decision in the country. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is 89 and has ruled since 1989, still has the final authority over the country’s fate. 

The snap election comes amid a slump in voter participation in Iran. In 2021, when Raisi was elected, only 47 percent of the nation voted, the lowest turnout in the nation’s history. Ben Talebu said he did not expect a significantly higher turnout this time around. 

“The establishment in Iran tries to make a big show of elections as a weighted corner of legitimacy, to put lipstick on a pig, and to signal to the international community that they are legitimate at home,” Ben Talebu said. “But increasingly, people are writing in blank ballots or not voting because they have given up on the ballot box and moved to street action.” 

Ben Talebu added that whoever wins, Iran is unlikely to try to improve relations with the West, unlike when former President Hassan Rouhani took power in 2013, since there is “little appetite” by Khammeni for a geopolitical reset.

Here are the four candidates who remain:

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Ghalibaf, 62, is a hardline conservative who served as a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He is known for his role in the crackdowns on student protestors while serving as a general in the IRGC. He is currently sanctioned by Canada. 

He has served as the speaker of Iran’s parliament since 2020. 

He also served as mayor of Tehran from 2005 to 2017, where he faced several corruption scandals, leading many Iranians to still view him as corrupt, according to Parsi and Ben Talebu. 

According to Parsi, Ghalibaf has signaled while campaigning that he is a “more pragmatic conservative” who is not entirely opposed to stronger relations with the West. 

Former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili

Jalili was the country’s nuclear negotiator but was also a hardliner who says that he opposes stronger relations with the West. If elected, Jalili is expected to continue crackdowns on protests and further restrict the rights of Iranian women.  

According to Parsi, Jalili did not participate in the “secret negotiations” that led to the Iran deal under the Obama administration and constantly worked to frustrate progress with the U.S.

“The west has a horrible experience working with Jalili,” Parsi added. 

Cleric and former justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi 

He is the only cleric in the race, and has previously served as Rouhani’s justice minister and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s interior minister. 

Pourmohammadi played a leading role in the 1988 executions of political prisoners held in jails. Raisi was also involved in those executions. 

The cleric shocked many when he announced during a debate that he would loosen the requirements around women wearing Hijabs in the country. Iran and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world that require head covering for women. In 2018, Saudi Arabia removed the requirement. 

The reformer: Masoud Pezeshkian

A heart surgeon who served as vice president of Iran’s parliament from 2016 to 2020, he supported the Iran nuclear deal and questioned the government over its narrative about the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died in police custody. She had been detained for not complying with the nation’s hijab laws, and her death set off large anti-government demonstrations.

His closest advisors are members of Rouhani’s team, according to Parsi. He favors better relations with the West.

He has also based his campaign around supporting Iranian women, the youth and ethnic minorities. 

Ben Talebu called Pezeshkian “a so-called reformer” and said he would not meaningfully challenge the status quo. He added that he believes that Iran included him on the ballot in an effort to drive up voter turnout in the country by offering a relatively anti-establishment option.

Who dropped out?  

Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani and one of Raisi’s vice presidents, Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi. 

Both of them are conservatives. While dropping out, they both called on the conservatives in the race and in the country to unite around one candidate to prevent Pezeshkian from gaining power, though they didn’t back a specific candidate.

Khamenei has also made comments in recent days signaling that he does not want Pezeshkian to win. 

“Some politicians in our country believe they must kowtow to this power or that power,” Khamenei said in a speech last week. “Some think like that. Or they think that all ways to progress pass through America. No, such people can’t” run the country well, he said.

What do polls show? 

The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran, which is based in the Netherlands, released June 22 polls showing that Pezeshkian has 37.7% of the vote, Jalili 29.4%, and Ghalibaf 8.3%, with another 18.4% undecided among those who plan to vote. 

A June 20 poll from an Iranian-affiliated group showed Jalili polling at 26.2%, Pezeshkian at 19.8% and Ghalibaf at 19%.