Iran’s presidential candidate Alireza Zakani announced his withdrawal from the presidential race this Thursday.
Iran’s state media, ISNA, reported this Thursday that the second presidential candidate, Alireza Zakani, has withdrawn from the presidential race less than a day after Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi announced his resignation on Wednesday.
In a post on X, Zakani announced his withdrawal and urged two other candidates, ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, and conservative Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of the parliament, to unite for victory.
“They should unite and not leave the revolutionary forces’ rightful demands unanswered,” Zakani said in his tweet. On Wednesday, Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, another presidential candidate, announced his withdrawal from the presidential race.
The 58-year-old Zakani is the current mayor of Tehran and is also a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. He left the race to endorse late President Ebrahim Raisi in the 2021 presidential race.
Both Zakani and Ghazizadeh Hashemi scored less than 5% votes in several opinion surveys conducted on who can win the 14th presidency in Iran. Of the six candidates initially approved by the Guardian Council to compete for the office of the presidency, there now remain four competitors, three of whom have raced neck to neck in polls. They include Saeed Jalili, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and Masoud Pezeshkian.
“We must consolidate our efforts to address the rightful aspirations of revolutionary factions, thereby preventing the formation of another Rouhani administration,” Zakani further said in his post.
During the presidential debates, Zakani was one of the toughest critics of reformist Hassan Rouhani, the former president of Iran.
