Tehran mayor leaves Iran’s presidential race to back fellow conservative in bid to unseat Rouhani

Iranian presidential hopeful Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf withdrew Monday from the race to unseat the country’s moderate leader, in a move to unite conservatives behind fellow hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi in the homestretch for Friday’s election.

The two candidates were the top conservative challengers to President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist whose government negotiated a 2015 deal with world powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions.

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Ghalibaf’s withdrawal “was likely an orchestrated move to shore up support behind a single principlist candidate and pose a potent challenge to Rouhani,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank based in Washington. Iran’s hard-line conservatives are widely known as “principlists.”

“Iran’s political right has been scrambling to field a single candidate” who could counter Rouhani’s coalition of technocrats, pragmatists and reformers, Taleblu said.

Although Rouhani is still favored to win, “it is highly likely that Ghalibaf’s voters will flock to Raisi,” Taleblu said.

Raisi, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, has close ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who last year appointed him as head of Iran’s largest charitable foundation, the Astan Quds Razavi. He served for years on the judiciary, including on a 1988 panel accused of sentencing thousands of political prisoners to death.

But he has limited political experience and gave weak performances in three televised presidential debates. His links to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps and hard-line ruling clerics could push undecided voters to the Rouhani camp. Rouhani, 68, is also a Shiite cleric.

“So far, Raisi has received support from the shadowy corners of the Iranian security establishment,” Taleblu said. But he “has failed to touch off a national movement.”

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