Iran Names Six Candidates for President, Including Parliament Speaker

Six candidates, including the speaker of Parliament, have been approved to run in the Iranian election this month to succeed President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month. The vote comes at a moment when the country faces acute domestic and international challenges, state media said on Sunday.

The speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, and five other men were approved by the Guardian Council, a 12-person body that vets candidates, for the balloting on June 28, according to the state news agency IRNA, which cited Mohsen Eslami, spokesman for the country’s election headquarters.

Mr. Ghalibaf, a retired pilot and former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, has run twice unsuccessfully for the country’s presidency and is a former mayor of the capital, Tehran. He became speaker of Parliament in 2020 following a legislative election.

The other candidates include a former interior minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi; Saeed Jalili, a former chief nuclear negotiator; and the current Tehran mayor, Alireza Zakani.

The country’s next president will be confronted with problems at home and abroad. Deep economic troubles, exacerbated by international sanctions, are fueling discontent among some Iranians who have demanded social and political freedoms as well as prosperity.

The largest recent uprising, led by women, erupted in 2022 after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody; she was accused of improperly covering her hair under the country’s hijab laws. Those protests grew to include demands for an end to clerical rule.