Ahmadinejad and Baghaei: We Will Not Support Any Candidate

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamid Baghaei, two disqualified candidates for the presidential election, in their first reaction to their disqualification, announced in a statement that they would not support any candidate. On Sunday, April 23, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamid Baghaei stated that they had run for election due to 'widespread and repeated requests' from the people and consider themselves 'small servants of the nation and soldiers of the revolution.' In their statement, these disqualified candidates wrote, 'We explicitly declare that we will not support any individual in the upcoming elections.' The statement did not mention whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters would participate in the elections. The Guardian Council did not approve the qualifications of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran, and Hamid Baghaei, his deputy in the tenth government. Following Ahmadinejad's disqualification, several Friday prayer leaders urged the disqualified candidates not to 'cause a commotion.' In recent days, reports about a letter from Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, head of the Dispute Resolution Council, to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic for the approval of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's qualifications had been published. However, the Telegram channel 'Dolat Bahar,' close to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denied these reports. Meanwhile, Abbasali Kadkhodai, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, stated on Saturday evening, April 2, in a television program that 'I doubt that any other individual will be approved by a government decree like in 2005.' He also announced that the 'recommendation' of the Supreme Leader to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not to run in the presidential election was 'not taken into account' in his qualification review unless it was a government decree. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, confirmed on September 27, 2016, that he had told Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that 'it is not advisable' for him to participate in the upcoming elections. Ahmadinejad's candidacy, contrary to this 'recommendation,' faced opposition from some principlists, and several principlist figures had called for his and Baghaei's disqualification. Nevertheless, in an interview with the American news agency Associated Press, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emphasized his support for Hamid Baghaei and stated regarding the reason for his candidacy despite the Supreme Leader's recommendation that 'the conditions have fundamentally changed.' He had previously stated that with the candidacy of Ebrahim Raisi, the elections had practically turned into a bipolar situation, and with his candidacy, it would become tripolar. In this context, Kadkhodai rejected the possibility of approving disqualified candidates by government decree.