Reformist Faezeh Hashemi said that her late father, former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani Hashemi, would have supported Abdol-Naser Hemmati in this election. Faezeh Hashemi was a potential candidate in this election but announced she would not run in April as she considered the result a foregone conclusion.
The Guardian Council, which vets the candidates, has notified the Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for managing the election, that it has added new conditions for candidates this election. This includes that candidates will have to be between the ages of 40 and 75, a ruling that will exclude candidate Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi. A second condition is that candidates cannot have a criminal history, which will exclude several potential candidates, such as Reformist Mostafa Tajzadeh, and two female candidates, Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani and Shahindokht Molaverdi. The Guardian Council had been trying to change the Presidential law for more than six months but has been blocked by the Parliament.
A member of the Executives of Construction Party, a key Reformist group, told IRNA that the son of former President Rafsanjani, Mohsen Hashemi, has two conditions for running for president: a guarantee that the Guardian Council will approve his candidacy, and united support from all Reformist factions. Both conditions seem unlikely to be confirmed. Hashemi’s sister, Faezeh Hashemi, had also raised the prospect of running although she recently said she will not participate.
The Office of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a statement denying claims made by Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani on Tuesday night, that he had asked her to be his Vice-Presidential candidate on his campaign. The statement is as follows: “Ms Faezeh Hashemi's claim that Dr. Ahmadinejad's offered a coalition or first deputy to her are strongly and comprehensively denied”.
Prominent female candidate, Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, told Hamshahri that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had asked her to run on his ticket as his Vice-President, but she had refused because of the events of the 2009 Election, particularly as Ahmadinejad had repeatedly insulted her father, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, during that period. Hashemi said that “people might change, but if Mr. Ahmadinejad had changed, he should have first apologized” before approaching her.
Tejarat published an analysis on the possibility of women candidates in this election. In previous elections, women have been able to nominate but have never been approved, partially due to the wording of the Constitutional law on the criteria for President, the meaning of which is in dispute. Last year, a spokesperson for the Guardian Council, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, said that women were not excluded by law, although it has been unclear whether this was his personal opinion or that of the Guardian Council. So far, two women, Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani and Sara Fadaei, both academics, have announced their candidacy, but the analysis also speculated that several other women might nominate. These include Elham Aminzadeh (former Vice President for Legal Affairs), Masoumeh Ebtekar (Vice President for Women and Families), Shahindokht Molaverdi (former Rouhani cabinet member), Zahra Nejad-Bahram (Tehran city councillor), and Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi (former Ahmadinejad cabinet minister). Faezeh Hashemi is the most prominent to nominate so far, although she does not expect to be approved: “Since I have a prison record, and am facing another case and a sentence, I will definitely be disqualified. But since I believe in women registering for elections, I will do so symbolically”.
Effat Marashi, the widow of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and the mother of female candidate Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, shares her thoughts on the prospects of Iranian woman becoming President. In a veiled challenge to the Guardian Council, which has always disqualified female candidates, she stated, “if there is a woman who has the power to do this important job, she has the right to become President and no one can take that right away from her”. When asked if she thought a woman could run the country, Marashi swiftly replied “There is nothing that women can’t do”.
Faezeh Hashemi, one of the only women to declare intention to run, declared in an interview that she would prefer to debate the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei on domestic politics, as opposed to other potential candidates. In the same interview, she also questioned the democratic intentions of both the Reformists and Principalists, and criticised the harassment of women by the Ansar-e Hezbollah group.