Iranian lawmakers re-elected former Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf on Tuesday as the speaker of parliament, state television reported, ending speculation that he might stand as a candidate for president next month.
State TV said 198 lawmakers, out of 287, voted for the former Revolutionary Guards commander, who previously ran unsuccessfully in two presidential races and dropped out of a third to avoid splitting the hardline vote. Qalibaf revived his political ambitions by running for parliament in 2020.
An early presidential election is set for June 28 following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
The registration for presidential candidates will start on Thursday. Qalibaf had been touted as a potential candidate in the presidential race by insiders and Iranian state media.
He is an acknowledged hardliner who as a general in the Revolutionary Guard, cracked down on protests by university students in 1999. He reportedly ordered students to be shot in 2003 as Iran’s police chief.
Qalibaf is a trained pilot who served in the Guard during Iran’s bloody decade-long war against Iraq in the 1980s. In the years after the war, he served as the head of the Guard’s construction arm, driving efforts to rebuild the country.
He later commanded the Guard’s air force, and in 1999, co-signed a letter to reformist President Mohammad Khatami warning him that the Guard would intervene unless he put down student protests over a reformist paper being shut down.
In the wake of that violence, several were reported killed, hundreds injured and thousands arrested.
As head of Iran’s police, he is credited with modernizing the force and introducing the 110 emergency phone number.
Qalibaf ran for president in 2005, 2013 and 2017. In the last, he withdrew in favour of Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19. Killed along with him was foreign minister Abdollahian.
