As the campaigning period for Iran’s presidential election concluded a day before the vote, two candidates withdrew from the race.
Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, announced his withdrawal on Thursday via a post on X.
Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, 53, was the first to exit, urging others to follow suit to strengthen the “front of the revolution,” as reported by the state-run IRNA news agency.
The snap election is scheduled for Friday, following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May.
The next presidential election was originally planned for 2025. Hashemi, a vice president under Raisi, previously ran in the 2021 election, finishing last with less than one million votes.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reported from Tehran that Hashemi’s withdrawal does little to unify the conservative camp, which remains split between hardliners Saeed Jalili and parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Despite expectations that one might step down in favour of the other, this did not occur.
Ghalibaf, a former commander of the IRGC’s air force, has served as parliament speaker for four years, was Tehran’s mayor from 2005 to 2017, and was previously the chief of police.
He ran for president in 2005, 2013, and 2017, withdrawing in favour of Raisi in the latter.
Jalili, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council, also withdrew in the 2021 election in support of Raisi.
The sole reformist candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon, has ties to the former administration of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who negotiated Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal. Khamenei has recently called for maximum voter turnout.
Khodr noted that Pezeshkian still has a chance of winning, dependent on voter turnout, which has been historically low in recent elections.
Despite the nuclear deal’s promise nearly a decade ago, Iranians now face high inflation, severe economic sanctions, and regional instability amid the Israel-Gaza conflict and Iran’s direct attacks on Israel in April.
