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Iran's Guardian Council on Sunday approved the candidacy of the speaker of the country's hardline parliament and five others in the June 28 presidential election, following a helicopter crash that killed President Ebrahim Raisi and seven other people.

The council again barred former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist known for the crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 re-election, from running.

The council's decision represents the kickoff of an abbreviated two-week campaign to replace Raisi, a hardline protégé of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once mooted as a possible successor to the 85-year-old cleric.

The selection of candidates approved by the Guardian Council, a group of clerics and jurists ultimately overseen by Khamenei, suggests that Iran's Shiite theocracy is hoping to make elections easier after recent votes saw record turnout and tensions remain high over nuclear power is progressing rapidly in the country. program, as well as the war between Israel and Hamas.

The Guardian Council also continued to refuse any woman or anyone calling for radical change in the country's governance.

The campaign will likely include live televised debates of the candidates on Iran's state television channel. They also advertise on billboards and offer speeches to support their offerings.

So far, none of them have given details, although all have promised a better economic situation for the country, which suffers from sanctions from the United States and other Western countries because of its nuclear program , which now enriches uranium closer to weapons-grade than ever before. levels.

Such matters of state remain Khamenei's final decision, but in the past, presidents have leaned either toward engagement or confrontation with the West.

The most high-profile candidate remains Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, 62, a former mayor of Tehran with close ties to the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. However, many remember that Qalibaf, as a former Guard general, participated in a violent crackdown on Iranian university students in 1999. He also allegedly ordered live fire to be used against students in 2003, while he was the country's police chief.

Qalibaf ran unsuccessfully for president in 2005 and 2013. He withdrew from the 2017 presidential campaign to support Raisi in his first failed presidential bid. Raisi won the 2021 elections, which saw the lowest turnout ever recorded for a presidential election in Iran, after all major opponents found themselves disqualified.

Khamenei gave a speech last week alluding to qualities that Qalibaf's supporters have highlighted as possibly indicating the supreme leader's support for the speaker.

Yet Qalibaf's role in the crackdown may be viewed differently after years of unrest that rocked Iran, both because of its struggling economy and mass protests sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman died after being arrested for not wearing her headscarf. , or hijab, to the taste of the security forces.

The Guardian Council disqualified Ahmadinejad, the inflammatory politician who questions the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad increasingly challenged Khamenei towards the end of his term and is remembered for the bloody crackdown on Green Movement protests in 2009. He was also disqualified in the last election by the panel.

The election comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over arming Russia in that country's war against Ukraine. His support for mandated militias across the Middle East is increasingly in the spotlight as Yemen's Houthi militias attack ships in the Red Sea over Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others were killed in a May 19 helicopter crash in far northwest Iran. Investigations continue, although authorities say there are no immediate signs of foul play in the crash on a cloud-covered mountainside.

Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai in the chaotic days following the 1979 revolution.