ALBAWABA - Iran has opened a five-day period of registration for the upcoming elections, which is being held to decide on a replacement for the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash, along with several other officials, earlier this month.
The elections were moved up from its initial 2025 date in the wake of Raisi's untimely death on May 19. Iran's Interior Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, announced the registration period open.
The helicopter carrying Raisi and seven members of his entourage, including Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister, crashed into a foggy mountaintop in northern Iran, killing everyone on board.
According to a state TV broadcast on Thursday, "roughly thirty people" submitted candidacy forms, but "none of them met the basic conditions for qualification". As to the election laws of Iran state, candidates must hold a master's degree and be between the ages of 40 and 75.
Similar to past election cycles, it is anticipated that the front-runners for Iran's major political factions will file their applications closer to the registration deadline.
Iranian elections are conducted by the Interior Ministry, which also oversees national law enforcement, without much external oversight.
Following the disqualification of all the contenders with the best possibility to confront him, Ebrahim Raisi became the winner in the 2021 Iranian presidential election.
It was the least attended presidential election in Iran's history. Despite demands for a boycott, turnout for this year's parliamentary vote was significantly lower.
That was most likely an indication of the dissatisfaction of voters with Iran's Shiite theocracy, which has existed for more than 40 years following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, as well as a hard-line cleric who was sanctioned by the United States due to his role in mass executions in 1988, AP reported.
