DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Two conservative candidates in Iran’s presidential election withdrew from the race as the country prepared for Friday’s national vote, an effort by hard-liners to coalesce around a unity candidate and block a moderate alternative in the race to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi.
Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, 53, dropped his candidacy and urged other candidates to do the same “so that the front of the revolution will be strengthened,” the state-run IRNA news agency reported late Wednesday night. Mr. Ghazizadeh Hashemi served as one of Raisi’s vice presidents and as the head of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs. He ran in the 2021 presidential election and received some 1 million votes, coming in last place.
On Thursday, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani also withdrew, as he did previously in the 2021 election in which Raisi was voted into office.
Mr. Zakani said he withdrew to “block the formation of a third administration” of former President Hassan Rouhani, a reference to reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian. Polls suggest Mr. Pezeshkian is making an unexpectedly strong bid with the support of former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who under President Rouhani reached the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Such withdrawals are common in the final hours of an Iranian presidential election, particularly in the last 24 hours before the vote is held when campaigns enter a mandatory quiet period without rallies.
With the withdrawals, analysts broadly see the race as a three-way contest.
Two hard-liners, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, are fighting over the same bloc, experts say. Then there’s Mr. Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon and former health minister who has sought to associate himself with Mr. Rouhani and other reformist figures like former President Mohammad Khatami and those who led the 2009 Green Movement protest.
Iran’s theocracy under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has maintained its stance of not approving women or anyone urging radical change to the country’s government for the ballot. However, the Supreme Leader in recent days has called for a “maximum” turnout in the vote, while also issuing a veiling warning to Mr. Pezeshkian and his allies about moving too close to the United States.
Widespread public apathy has descended in the Iranian capital over the election, coming after a May helicopter crash that killed Raisi, considered a leading hard-liner.
After the promise nearly a decade ago of Tehran’s nuclear deal opening up Iran to the rest of the world, Iranians broadly face crushing economic conditions and a far more uncertain regional picture that already has seen the Islamic Republic directly attack Israel for the first time. Iran also now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and has enough of it to produce several nuclear weapons if it chooses.
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