After Ebrahim Raisi's death, Iran approves six candidates for June 28 presidential elections

Iran's Guardian Council on Sunday approved six candidates, including a hard-line parliament speaker, for the snap presidential elections scheduled for June 28 called in the wake of former President Ebrahim Raisi's tragic death in a helicopter crash that also killed foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and five others. Like previous elections, no woman candidate was named by the Guardian Council again this time.

The council's decision represents the starting gun for a shortened, two-week campaign to replace Raisi, a hard-line protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was



once floated as a possible successor for the 85-year-old cleric. The council once again banned former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand leader known for a crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 re-election, from running.

The selection of candidates approved by the hard-line Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists ultimately overseen by Khamenei, suggests Iran's Shiite theocracy hopes to ease the election through after recent votes saw record-low turnout and as tensions remain high over the country's rapidly advancing nuclear programme as well as the Israel-Hamas war.