Who is challenging Ahmadinejad's power?

Ali Arouzi NBC News Producer

TEHRAN - Iran will hold presidential elections on Friday. Some analysts have said they are the most important elections since the 1979 revolution because the differences between the conservative and reformist candidates are so great and yet there is no clear front runner.

It is not a fait accompli that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be re-elected – a powerful conservative and two reformists have created stiff competition for him.  NBC News’ Ali Arouzi explains who the four candidates are and what issues are at stake. 

Who are the two reformist candidates? 
Mir Hossein Mousavi was the last prime minister Iran had before that political position was eliminated in 1989. He was the prime minister during the war with Iraq in the 1980s, so he is credited with helping Iran through a very difficult period. There were almost no supplies during that time, but he rationed things very well and kept people supplied with food and basic goods.

So that’s why he’s become such a front runner in this election — because the economy is in such turmoil. He had a strong position in turning the economy around during the war with Iraq, so a lot of people think he might be able to help the economy this time around as well.

Another interesting thing about Mousavi is that he’s been out campaigning with his wife and she’s been dubbed the “First First Lady” of Iran. She goes to all of the campaign rallies with him, they hold hands and she makes speeches — all of which was unheard of here before. She still wears the traditional chador, the cloak worn by Iranian women in public, but it’s still a very Western way of campaigning and nobody has ever done anything like that before. It appeals to a lot of older female voters.  

But Mousavi is a very gray character, that’s the problem with him. He’s not charismatic at all and so he doesn’t really inspire people. He doesn’t really appeal to a broad range of people because he’s not a great orator and when he gives press conferences he doesn’t answer a lot of questions.

But because he was the prime minister during the war, he is likely to get support in military circles.
 
Interestingly, also during the war, he was at odds with the supreme leader (the highest ranking political and religious authority in Iran).  At that time, there was a supreme leader, president and a prime minister. Ayatollah Khomeini was the supreme leader and Ali Khamenei (who is the current supreme leader) was the president and Mousavi was the prime minister. There were actually some questions marks over whether or not Mousavi would be given permission to run because he had clashed with the current supreme leader, Khamenei, a lot during that period. But having said that, there is no way he would have become a candidate if the supreme leader hadn’t given him the nod.

Mahdi Karroubi is the other reformist candidate. He is a prominent moderate reformist mullah. He ran in the first round of the last presidential elections in 2005 against Ahmadinejad, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and others. He was actually quite ahead in the polls in 2005 when the three of them were battling it out in the first round, but his lead quickly dissipated. He famously said that he went to sleep for an hour and woke up at the bottom of the pile.

He’s been involved in Iranian politics for a long time — he was the speaker of the Iranian parliament for several years — which is a very powerful position here. And this is the second time he’s tried to become president.

One of the points of contention people have against him in the reformist camp is that he’s a spoiler. Many believe that he has no chance of winning the election, but fear that he will take votes away from Mousavi, which will help Ahmadinejad. So people are hoping that he will pull out of the race, but he hasn’t.

Who is the conservative candidate?
Mohsen Rezaei is sort of center-right, but he is trying to bill himself as a semi-reformist. This election has really been a gloves-off campaign and he has accused Ahmadinejad of hurting Iranian foreign policy with his comments about the Holocaust and Israel. He said that the comments haven’t done Iran any favors and that we need to change that.

But interestingly, he is wanted by Interpol for allegations that he helped plan the bombing of the AMIA building, a Jewish center in Argentina, in 1994. The attack killed 85 and injured hundreds. Rezaei was head of the Revolutionary Guards, one of the most powerful branches of Iran’s military, for 16 years. He is accused of planning the attack because the Revolutionary Guards were calling the shots at the time – and still are.
 
As a candidate, he’s a wild card. It is very unlikely that he will get elected.  But out of all candidates — in terms of character and policy — he is probably closest to Ahmadinejad. He also has a strong military background, similar to Ahmadinejad.  

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