Rhino: Agencies – Iranian state television reported on Sunday that the Guardian Council, which oversees elections and legislation, has approved six candidates to run in early presidential elections scheduled for later this month after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last month.

The list includes Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and former Revolutionary Guards commander who is a staunch conservative, Saeed Jalili, the former chief nuclear negotiator and four-year chief of staff to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is a conservative, and Ali Reza Zakani, the conservative mayor of Tehran, according to state television.

The list, announced on state television by an election commission spokesman, also includes Masoud Bazeshkian, a reformist MP, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, an ultra-conservative and former interior minister, and Amir Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi, a conservative politician.

‘With the announcement of the final list of candidates, their election activities officially begin,’ state television said.

The election is scheduled to take place on 28 June.

State media reported that the council disqualified former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, who belongs to the conservative movement.