Larijani wins hardline backing for Iran election

Security adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Larijani said on Monday he had won the backing of hardline parties for his presidential election bid.

“The Fundamentalists’ Coordination Council, in its latest decision, has chosen me as their main candidate in the next presidential elections,” Larijani told IRNA. ...

Larijani, 50, stepped down as head of Iran’s state broadcasting monopoly IRIB last year. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei immediately appointed him as one of his representatives on Iran’s top security decision-making body, the Supreme National Security Council.

In November he likened Tehran’s decision to freeze sensitive nuclear work while it tried to reach a negotiated settlement with the European Union to “trading a pearl for a candy bar”.

Public interest in the elections is so far muted with many disillusioned with politics after eight years of Khatami’s limited success in pushing through reforms in the face of hardline opposition. ...