Iran parliament speaker Ghalibaf launches presidential bid

The conservative speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, on Monday registered his candidacy for the snap presidential election on June 28.

The election was originally to be held in 2025 but was brought forward following the unexpected death of ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi on May 19.

Raisi and seven members of his entourage, including foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were killed when their helicopter came down on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran.

Like all the other hopefuls, Ghalibaf now has to wait until June 11 to see if his candidacy is approved by the Guardian Council, a conservative-dominated, 12-strong body of jurists, either appointed or approved by the supreme leader, which vets all candidates for public office.

This is Ghalibaf’s fourth run at the presidency, following bids in 2005, 2013 and 2017. On his last attempt, Ghalibaf withdrew in favor of Raisi, who finished second to the moderate incumbent Hassan Rouhani.

“If I don’t run for election, the work that we have started in the last few years to solve the economic problem of the people… will not be completed,” he said after submitting his registration.

He added that if he did not believe that Iran’s economic and social problems could be solved he “would never have entered the field of competition.”

Ghalibaf, 62, is a former commander of the air force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of Iran’s military.

The conservative politician was elected the speaker of the new Iranian parliament on May 28. He also held the post in the previous legislature.

An Iran-Iraq war veteran, Ghalibaf was mayor of Tehran from 2005 to 2017 and before that was chief of the Iranian police forces.

Candidate registration opened on Thursday and closes on Monday.

Other prominent figures including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, moderate ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani and ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili have also registered their bids.