TEHRAN: A former speaker of Iran’s parliament registered Saturday to run in the Islamic Republic’s upcoming presidential election, becoming the first high-profile candidate to potentially back the policies of the outgoing administration that reached Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
The decision by Ali Larijani, long a prominent conservative voice who later allied himself with Iran’s relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani, came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election. While a panel overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ultimately will approve candidates, Larijani has maintained close ties to the cleric over his decades in government.
Journalists in Tehran watched Larijani, 63, register at the Interior Ministry, which oversees elections. He waved to onlookers after completing the process, his face covered by a blue surgical mask as Iran continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
Larijani, a former commander in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, previously served as the minister of culture and Islamic guidance and as the head of Iran’s state broadcaster. Under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he served as secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council for two years, and as a senior nuclear negotiator. He later became speaker of the Iranian parliament for some 12 years, stepping down in May 2020.
Larijani’s family includes prominent members of Iran’s theocracy, with his cleric brother once serving as the head of the Iranian judiciary. His father was a prominent ayatollah.
Larijani had an active role in signing a 25-year strategic agreement with China earlier this year. On Friday, as a sign of respect, Larijani reportedly asked permission to run from high-ranking clerics in the religious city of Qom.
Within Iran, candidates exist on a political spectrum that broadly includes hard-liners who want to expand Iran’s nuclear program, moderates who hold onto the status quo, and reformists who want to change the theocracy from within.
Those calling for radical change find themselves blocked from even running for office by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel that vets and approves candidates under Khamenei’s watch.
“Like outgoing President Rouhani, Larijani is someone Khamenei trusts to represent Iran without compromising the regime’s basic tenets of religious supervision over society and independence from foreign powers,” Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, wrote recently.
A clear candidate has yet to emerge within the reformists. Some have mentioned Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, though he later said he wouldn’t run after a scandal over a leaked recording in which he offered frank criticism of the Guard and the limits of the civilian government’s power.
At the same time Larijani registered, so too did Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the eldest son of the late former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani, a member of Tehran’s city council, has been described as a reformist by political commentators.
Several other candidates have prominent backgrounds in the Guard, a paramilitary force answerable only to Khamenei. Hard-liners have increasingly suggested a former military commander should be president given the country’s problems, something that hasn’t happened since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the purge of the armed forces that followed.
Iran’s former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also registered Wednesday. Though his attempt to run in 2017 ultimately was blocked after Khamenei criticized Ahmadinejad, this year the supreme leader has not warned him off.
Former Iran parliament speaker registers to run for president
https://arab.news/gb63e
Former Iran parliament speaker registers to run for president
- Decision by Ali Larijani came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election
- Panel overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ultimately will approve candidates
US, France, Germany, UK urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria: joint statement
WASHINGTON: The United States and its allies France, Germany and Britain called Sunday for “de-escalation” in Syria and urged in a joint statement for the protection of civilians and infrastructure.
“The current escalation only underscores the urgent need for a Syrian-led political solution to the conflict, in line with UNSCR 2254,” read a statement issued by the US State Department, referencing the 2015 UN resolution that endorsed a peace process in Syria.
Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference
- Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory
LONDON: Britain will provide an additional 19 million pounds ($24 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza, the international development minister said Monday, calling for Israel to give greater access ahead of a key conference on the conflict.
“Gazans are in desperate need of food, and shelter with the onset of winter,” the minister, Anneliese Dodds, said in a statement as she headed for a three-day visit to the region, including an international conference in Cairo Monday on the Gaza Strip’s aid needs.
“The Cairo conference will be an opportunity to get leading voices in one room and put forward real-world solutions to the humanitarian crisis,” she added.
“Israel must immediately act to ensure unimpeded aid access to Gaza.”
Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory.
The new UK funding will be split into 12 million pounds for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Food Programme (WFP), and seven million pounds for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the statement said.
UNRWA announced Sunday it had halted the delivery of aid through the key Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza because of safety fears, saying the situation had become “impossible.”
Britain has committed to spending a total of 99 million pounds this year in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, the government said.
After Dodds’s Cairo stop, the minister is to travel to the Palestinian territories and Israel.
Islamist militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 44,429 in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets
- The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect
DAMASCUS: The Syrian rescue service known as the White Helmets said early on Monday on X that at least 25 people have been killed in northwestern Syria in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian government and Russia on Sunday.
In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension
- The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militants groups attacking both government forces and Kurdish YPG fighters in and around the northern Aleppo province over the weekend, a Syrian war monitor said
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s top diplomat and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday about the “rapidly developing” conflict in Syria where militants have made gains.
Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed by telephone “the need for de-escalation and the protection of civilian lives and infrastructure in Aleppo and elsewhere,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The call came after Syrian militants and their Turkish-backed allies launched their biggest offensive in years, seizing control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
According to a Turkish foreign ministry source, Fidan told Blinken Ankara was “against any development that would increase instability in the region” and said Turkiye would “support moves to reduce the tension in Syria.”
He also said “the political process between the regime and the opposition should be finalized” to ensure peace in Syria while insisting that Ankara would “never allow terrorist activities against Turkiye nor against Syrian civilians.”
The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militant groups attacking government forces and Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) fighters in and around Aleppo, a Syrian war monitor said.
Turkiye sees the YPG as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.
The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect.
More than 400 people have so far been killed in the offensive, most of them combatants, a Syrian war monitor said.
The State Department said the two also discussed “humanitarian efforts in Gaza and the need to bring the war to an end” as well as efforts to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Fidan said Israel “should keep its promises in order for the Lebanon ceasefire to become permanent” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza “as soon as possible.”
The pair also discussed Ukraine and South Caucasus, the source said.
Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces
- Russia launched airstrikes on militant targets in Aleppo for the first time since 2016
MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday said it was helping the Syrian army “repel” armed insurgents in three northern provinces, as Moscow seeks to support the government led by its ally Bashar al-Assad.
An Islamist-dominated militant alliance launched an offensive against the Syrian government on Wednesday, with Syrian forces losing control of the city of Aleppo on Sunday, according to a war monitor.
“The Syrian Arab Army, with the assistance of the Russian Aerospace Forces, is continuing its operation to repel terrorist aggression in the provinces of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo,” the Russian military said in a briefing on its website.
“Over the past day, missile and bombing strikes were carried out on places where militants and equipment were gathered,” it said in the same briefing, without saying where or by whom.
It said at least “320 militants were destroyed.”
Russia announced earlier this week that it was bombing militant targets in the war-torn country, with Russian warplanes striking parts of Aleppo — Syria’s second city — for the first time since 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Moscow is Syrian leader Assad’s most important military backer, having turned the tide of the civil war in his favor when it intervened in 2015.
