Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi announced he has withdrawn from the presidential race.
Less than 24 hours before the election day in Iran, presidential candidate Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi announced that he has decided to withdraw from the presidential race.
According to Iran’s state media, ISNA, the 53-year-old Ghazizadeh Hashemi, a former lawmaker and current vice president, announced his decision to quit the presidential race in a post on X on Wednesday night. In the 2021 presidential election, he secured 3.5 percent of the vote.
Speaking of why he has decided to leave the race, the principlist candidate noted that he quit the election to help “maintain the cohesion of the revolutionary forces and in response to the written request of the Supreme Council of the Revolution Forces’ Consensus and some scholars and patriots.”
Ghazizadeh Hashemi also said he hopes the three other principlist candidates, namely Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Saeed Jalili, and Alireza Zakani, can reach a consensus before the election day to empower what he called “the revolutionary forces’ front.”
During the presidential debates in Iran, Ghazizadeh Hashemi mostly rebuked two other presidential candidates, Masoud Pezeshkian and Mostafa Pourmohammadi.
Iran’s presidential election was initially set for 2025, but after the death of late President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on May 19, Iranians will turn out to vote for their preferred candidate this Friday to choose the country’s 14th president.
