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Election race in Iran: Ahmadinejad or Mousavi?

11 June 2009 15:33 (UTC +04:00)

4 candidates â€“ incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karroubi and former commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Mohsen Rezaee will run for the elections. But the main favorites of the elections are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Saborjhian) was born in Semnan province in 1956. He graduated from Tehran University. He received a PhD in transportation engineering in 1997. In 1980 he voluntarily left to participate in Iran-Iraq war. Late in the 80s he was governor of Khoy and Maku provinces of West Azerbaijan. He was appointed as the governor general of Ardabil Province in 1993 and resigned after Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997. in 2003 he was elected mayor of Tehran. Ahmadinejad became the sixth president of Iran on 6 August 2005, after winning 62 percent of the vote in the run-off poll, nearly twice that of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad managed to unite conservatives on the eve of the elections.
Even such politicians as speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani and Mayor of Tehran Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who were expected to run for the elections and criticized the economic policy pursued by the government, refused to separate the votes of the conservatives and decided to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Conservative members of the parliament signed the statement supporting Ahmadinejad. Only Mohsen Rezaee put forward his candidacy from this group. Rezaee is currently on the official Wanted list of Interpol, for allegations of a suicide bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1994.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Turkish (Azeri) by origin, was born in West Azerbaijan province in 1941. He graduated from the faculty of architecture of Tehran University. He participated in the revolution in 1979. After the revolution he was known as supporter of religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini in the internal political struggle that intensified in 1980-81. In 1981 he was appointed Foreign Minister and in autumn Prime Minister and worked with the current religious leader Ali Khamenei for eight years. The Constitution was changed after Khomeiniâ€™s death in 1989, post of Prime Minister was removed and Mousavi was dismissed. Though he left big politics, he did not leave Iranian elite.

He is currently the president of the Iranian Academy of Arts, the High Council of Cultural Revolution and the Expediency Discernment Council. Musavi met with Khamenei in April. It is not secret that no one can run for presidency in Iran without the religious leaderâ€™s blessing.
Musavi is known as a reformist politician advocating for extension of womenâ€™s rights, banning the moral police, opening the private TV channels, transparency of the governmentâ€™s activity. Musavi supports the liberalization of the economy and the dialogue in foreign policy. He condemned the Ahmadinejadâ€™s denial of Holocaust and said it had negative impact on the Iranâ€™s image in the world. He said he was ready to meet with Barack Obama if the US-Iran were normalized. The former Prime Minister is against the stopping of Iranâ€™s nuclear program, but supports peaceful nuclear program. For the first time in Iran, the candidateâ€™s wife joined the election campaign. Musaviâ€™s spouse Zahra Rahnavard is a dean of architecture faculty of Tehran University. She is participating in the pre-election meetings and focusing on the protection of women rights. Musavi used the Internet resources, including Facebook network, to communicate with the young voters. Undoubtedly the Azerbaijani Turks in Iran support Musavi in the elections campaign. If the second tour takes place, other reformist Mehdi Karrubiâ€™s supporters will also vote for Musavi.
There are more than 46 million voters in Iran.