With the defeat of Abbas Akhundi, Peyman Hanachi became the mayor of Tehran

The Tehran City Council elected Peyman Hanachi as the new mayor of Tehran. His vote difference with Abbas Akhundi, the other candidate for the mayoral position, was only one vote. A member of parliament described the current method of electing the mayor of Tehran as 'undemocratic'. According to Iranian news agencies, in the 100th session of the fifth Tehran City Council, the members elected the third mayor of Tehran in this term, and in the voting between Akhundi and Hanachi, out of a total of 21 votes, Peyman Hanachi received 11 votes. Abbas Akhundi, the former Minister of Roads and Urban Development under Hassan Rouhani's government, received 10 votes and conceded the position to his rival. After the mayor is elected by the city council members, the Ministry of Interior must also approve the nominated candidate. Following the resignation of Mohammad Ali Najafi, the former mayor of Tehran, who faced numerous controversies, Mohammad Ali Afshani was chosen to replace him, but he too was forced to resign after the announcement of the law prohibiting the employment of retirees for the mayoralty. Mr. Hanachi, born in 1964, is an architecture graduate from the University of Tehran and holds a doctorate in urban restoration and historical cities and is a lecturer in urban planning. He previously served as the Technical and Urban Development Deputy during Najafi's mayorship and as the Urban Planning Deputy during Afshani's mayorship. According to Young Journalists Club, he had previously been a candidate for the mayorship of Tehran, but 'despite having the necessary qualifications, he was prevented from becoming mayor due to a lack of party connections'. Hanachi also served as the Deputy for Architecture and Urban Planning at the Ministry of Roads from 2001 to 2005 and was appointed by Hassan Rouhani as one of the four real members of the Supreme Council of Cultural Heritage of the country. According to IRNA, he was one of the main candidates for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, in case the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development was split into two ministries: Housing and Urban Development and Roads and Transportation. The election of the third mayor of Tehran in the fifth council was accompanied by many political controversies and also drew criticism due to the method of its conduct. Among them, Tayebe Siawoshi, a member of the Tehran province representatives in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stated that 'in this method, the margins overshadow the content, and it is unclear where all this rumor-mongering about the mayor's election originates'. Ms. Siawoshi added in an interview with the House of the People website: 'The process of electing the mayor should be more democratic and transparent so that a maximum of three options are presented and publicized, and the specialized programs from these three candidates are obtained and examined in the city council committees, and ultimately the mayor is elected.' She described the number of mayoral candidates up to 30 options as 'causing an increase in margins and neglecting the main issue' and added that the emergence of this many names 'leads to unnecessary sidelining and wasting energy and costs and a lack of thorough examination of the qualifications of the candidates for the mayor of Tehran'. The position of the mayor of Tehran has always been a political position in Iran, and many analysts consider it a starting point for higher political positions and even the presidency. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the ninth and tenth governments, was the mayor of Tehran before his presidency.