Reuters/Dubai


A conservative former parliament speaker dropped out of the June 14 Iranian presidential election yesterday in a move to consolidate the hardline vote and lessen the chances of an upset favouring a moderate candidate.
The 12-man Guardian Council, largely under the sway of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had already barred all but eight of the 686 people who registered as candidates, including pragmatic ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
That left four hardliners, separated only by small differences on issues such as Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West, facing a lone independent outsider and two relative moderates who may be able to generate popular support.
Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a close adviser to Khamenei related to him by marriage, had been one of three so-called “Principlist” conservative candidates alongside Tehran Mayor Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati before announcing yesterday he was dropping out.
While he did not endorse any single candidate, Haddad-Adel urged voters to back his fellow Principlists, hinting that they were the ones also backed by Khamenei.
“With my withdrawal I ask the dear people to strictly observe the criteria of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution (Khamenei) when they vote for candidates,” Haddad-Adel said in a statement carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
 “I advise the dear people to take a correct decision so that either a Principlist wins in the first round, or if the election runs to a second round, the competition be between two Principlists,” he said.
The only remaining moderates in the presidential race are cleric Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator under reformist president Mohamed Khatami, and the lacklustre Mohamed Reza Aref.
Despite the odds stacked against him, Rowhani has still managed to rouse thousands of supporters in sometimes heated election rallies at which some of the old reformist slogans were chanted, such as calls for political prisoners to be freed. Several Rowhani staffers and supporters were arrested afterwards.
Mehr news agency, citing an unnamed source, said on Sunday the Guardians Council would consider barring Rowhani from the election for revealing what it said was classified information on Iran’s nuclear activity during a televised debate, and for the slogans uttered by his supporters.
But the Guardians Council said yesterday that it was not considering barring any other candidate, denying the reports.
While Rowhani only smiled when reporters asked him about the report that his candidacy may be up for review, he may have grasped that failure to curb his faithful could lead to his removal from the race.