On Wednesday, the Guardian Council election watchdog sent the names of the 15,200 qualified candidates to the interior ministry, which holds the election. Any candidate for elections in Iran must be approved by the Council, a 12-member clerical body, half of whom are directly appointed by the supreme leader.The candidates include 1,713 women, which is more than double the 819 who competed in 2020.The election will be held March 1, and the new parliament will convene in late May.Current parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf will run for election from his hometown, a constituency in the remote northeast, after winning a seat in the capital Tehran four years ago. Such a change in districts usually indicates shrinking popularity. In recent years, his fellow hardline critics occasionally accused him of ignoring the rights of other parliament members and disregarding reports of corruption while he was Tehran mayor.
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