ALI LARIJANI

Iran’s presidential election Friday will determine who will lead the country’s civilian government.

This week, Iran’s government announced the seven finalists who will be allowed to compete in the country’s presidential election on June 18. There are several reasons why this field of candidates has generated controversy both inside and outside Iran. How does Iran’s presidential election work?

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday he wrote the country’s supreme leader to protest a decision by an election watchdog to reject high-profile nominees for the June 18 presidential election. Rouhani in a weekly Cabinet meeting said he wished Iran's Guardian Council would give more would-be candidates the opportunity to run. The council on Tuesday barred former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, a conservative who allied with Rouhani in recent years, from running.

Iran has named the hard-line cleric running its judiciary and six others as approved candidates in its June 18 presidential election.

Iran’s judiciary chief and a prominent hard-line cleric has registered to run in the country's June presidential election.

A former speaker of Iran's parliament registered Saturday to run in the Islamic Republic's upcoming presidential election, becoming the first high-profile candidate to potentially back the policies of the outgoing administration that reached Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers. The decision by Ali Larijani, long a prominent conservative voice who later allied himself with Iran's relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani, came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election. While a panel overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ultimately will approve candidates, Larijani has maintained close ties to the cleric over his decades in government.

Iran has opened registration for potential candidates in the country's June presidential election.

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, center, is surrounded by a group of lawmakers after being elected as speaker of the parliament, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, May 28, 2020. Iran's parliament voted Thursday to elect Qalibaf, a hard-line former mayor of Tehran as the legislative body's new speaker. As speaker, Qalibaf leads a body that can debate Iran's annual budget and push for the impeachment of government ministers. That takes on new importance as the U.S. withdrew waivers from Iran's nuclear program late Wednesday and as tensions between the two nations remain high. A trained pilot, Qalibaf served in the paramilitary Guard during the countrys bloody 1980s war with Iraq.