Iranian presidential candidates have made all the stops in the latest debate Election news

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s presidential candidates have once again clashed over the third and final televised debate – this time in a clearer way, especially about the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and U.S. sanctions.

Seven men – five conservatives and hardliners, moderates and reformists – used a slightly improved “discussion” format on Saturday to talk more directly and at length about the corruption and mismanagement that has plagued the country.

After most candidates criticized the previous two debates for not moderating and seeing that they did not answer the same questions, State TV began the final event by asking all participants a question – about people’s issues.

Several candidates discussed the need for a review of the government’s management style, tackling corruption and helping marginalized Iranians, again without giving much detail on how their plans would actually be implemented.

But most of all, much more time was spent on the nuclear deal or the Comprehensive Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA), and the U.S. imposed harsh sanctions since 2018 when President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew his country from the landmark agreement.

In the previous two debates the issue has not been sidelined, with Ali Khamenei’s top leader, Ali Khamenei, saying last month that foreign policy is not “one of the main problems of the people”.

But moderate candidate Abdolnaser Hemmati, who was ousted as head of the central bank earlier this month for running for president, strongly criticized internal political forces against the JCPOA.

“What if power falls into the hands of the hard?” he directly asked Ebrahim Raisi, who runs the judiciary and is seen as a pioneer in the polls.

“I have no reservations about saying that there will be new sanctions with more international consensus,” the JCPOA said, referring to the previous period when Iran had multilateral sanctions.

The technocrat warned that Raisi and other similar politicians did not want the sanctions removed because it would cut off the forces of the country that are profiting, and said “all the time you played on Trump’s court with your harsh actions.”

He also opposed the ratification of the rest of the legislation by the Intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to complete Iran’s financial transparency action plan.

‘Flip table’

In response, Raisi said he will maintain his commitment to the JCPOA like any other agreement in the state.

However, he said the effective implementation of the agreement requires a “strong” government, and added that the outgoing administration of moderate President Hassan Rouhani was not like that.

About the FATF – which currently only considers Iran and North Korea on the blacklist of non-cooperative countries – he said he does not support it because it does not guarantee “the interests of our nation”.

Former high-ranking nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and former commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Mohsen Rezaei said both of their potential governments would “punish the enemy” by punishing Iran by encouraging local production. and “cancellation” of penalties.

“JCPOA is bad control,” Jalili said, while Rezaei said Iran must “turn the table or at least hit the table” when the U.S. rejects the deal and tries to use sanctions to make demands on Iran.

Nuclear negotiations

As candidates ran against each other, the sixth round of talks to revive the JCPOA in Vienna began as world powers continued to shuttle diplomacy with U.S. delegates while Iran refused to meet directly with Washington.

It seems unlikely that an agreement can be reached to restore the agreement before the Iranian presidential election. Meanwhile, the month-long extension of the content of the agreement reached by Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to continue monitoring its nuclear sites will end on June 24.

Russia’s chief negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov said in a tweet on Saturday that “we all want to do it as soon as possible, but the result is the quality of the document first.”

A day earlier, top Iranian and U.S. negotiators had spoken out against Twitter as Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi frustrated Robert Malley’s “crocodile tears”, questioning the death of political prisoner Sasan Niknafas. In an Iranian prison.

“Economic terrorism is a crime against humanity in the midst of a pandemic,” he wrote, referring to US sanctions.

A television station broadcasts the debate on presidential candidates in a store in Tehran, Iran [Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters]

Candidates are against disqualifications

Meanwhile, Iran will soon open its polling stations as criticism continues over the widespread disqualification of reformist and moderate candidates.

On Saturday, Ali Larijani, a top adviser to parliament and three-time speaker of parliament, the pragmatist who would present Raisi the biggest challenge, protested against the disqualification of a constitutional body known as the Guard Council.

He said in a statement that the supreme leader’s decision gave him the right to know why he was disqualified, especially as he said his daughter was living abroad and her studies were fake. Larijani called on tough municipalities to make their reasoning public.

Council spokesman Abas Ali Kadkhodaei responded quickly, saying in a tweet that the disqualifications were decided on the basis of “sufficient and reliable evidence and documents, and that there is no provision in the presidential election rule to protest” the disqualifications and the reasons behind them.

He also criticized the 2021 election for his former presidential candidate and former opposition leader.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi said his failed bid to prevent the re-election of hard-working President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked protests by the 2009 Green Movement, which is already with those who can no longer hold “humiliating and engineering elections”.

Mousavi, who has been detained at home without trial since the protests erupted, has warned that the persistence of the Guardian Council’s current style of oversight could make the title “Islamic republic” meaningless to the country.

The upcoming elections are expected to have a low turnout among people’s disappointment, as some polls have had a turnout of less than 40% – the lowest since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Even the much-criticized debates are unlikely to arouse public excitement, as polls suggest less than four out of 10 Iranians in the previous two.