Iranian expresident Ahmadinejad registers new bid for post

AFP | Tehran 

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Iran’s hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday registered his candidacy for a presidential election this month, state media reported.

The Islamic republic goes to the polls on June 28 to replace ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19. Ahmadinejad, 67, held the post for two straight terms from 2005 to 2013, a period marked by a standoff with the West especially over Iran’s nuclear programme and his incendiary remarks on Israel.

Like all presidential hopefuls, his bid is pending the approval of the Guardian Council, a conservative-dominated body of 12 jurists that vets all candidates for public office.

Ahmadinejad was previously disqualified from entering the presidential race in the 2021 and 2017 elections. “I am confident that all the country’s problems can be solved by making maximum use of national capacities,” he said after submitting his bid at the iwnterior ministry on Sunday.

In 2005, Ahmadinejad gained worldwide notoriety when he said Iran’s arch foe Israel was doomed to be “wiped off the map” and also asserted that the Holocaust was a “myth”.