Candidates Shake Up Iran’s Presidential Race as Last-Minute Entries

NYTimes.com — Iran’s presidential campaign took an unexpected turn on Saturday, when two game-changing politicians, both opposed to many of the government’s leaders, entered the race in the final minutes of a five-day registration period.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accompanied his protégé, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, to the Interior Ministry headquarters in the capital, Tehran, which was cordoned off by security forces keeping hundreds of curious onlookers at bay.

Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Mashaei arrived simultaneously with former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, like Mr. Mashaei, had kept analysts wondering whether he would participate in the elections, set for June 14.

Both men hold views that challenge Iran’s establishment, a loose alliance of conservative Shiite Muslim clerics and Revolutionary Guards commanders who hold sway over the country’s judiciary, Parliament and state news media.

They have called Mr. Mashaei “deviant” because he believes that Muslims can have an individual relationship with God, instead of through clerical intermediaries. They have also warned Mr. Rafsanjani not to run and called him a traitor, accusing him of supporting Iran’s two main opposition leaders, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Both men ran against Mr. Ahmadinejad in the 2009 elections, and they ended up under house arrest after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s re-election set off widespread protests.

In a sign of the tensions that will undoubtedly erupt now that Mr. Mashaei is a candidate, a fistfight broke out in the ministry building’s press room.

After a critic of Mr. Mashaei, Mohammad Abyaneh, a former Iranian ambassador to Mexico, accused Mr. Mashaei of placing “pornographic statues” in parks, one supporter shoved all the press microphones off a table and got into a fistfight with another person. “This is Mashaei,” Mr. Abyaneh shouted before he was escorted away.

After registering, Mr. Mashaei, whose son is married to the president’s daughter, held up his identity card and inked finger, a sign that he had entered his name as a candidate. With Mr. Ahmadinejad standing behind him, he asked those in the room to praise God.

“Welcome to the spring of humanity,” Mr. Mashaei said. He apologized for arriving at the last minute but did not explain why, and he did not take any questions. “Mr. Ahmadinejad convinced me that I have to run for the sake of the country,” he said.

Mr. Mashaei offered full-throated praise for Mr. Ahmadinejad, with whom he has been working for more than two decades.

“I will follow his suit,” he said.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who in the last few months has threatened to release what he calls evidence of corruption by leading clerics and politicians, returned the praise, calling Mr. Mashaei his “dear brother.”

“I know Mr. Mashaei for 28 years,” he said. “He is a faithful, practicing Muslim and highly competent. He believes in the potential of the Iranian nation.

“Mashaei means Ahmadinejad, and Ahmadinejad means Mashaei.”

Mr. Rafsanjani reportedly was at his home most of the day on Saturday, waiting for permission to run from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an ally from the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It is unclear whether he was given permission.

Technically, all Iranians are free to participate in elections, but Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, which vets candidates, must decide by May 23 who will be allowed to run.

The entry of Mr. Mashaei and Mr. Rafsanjani to the race diminishes the chances of lesser-known candidates, like Mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf of Tehran and Ali Akbar Velayati, the foreign policy adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei.

Iranian journalists, most of them clearly divided along partisan lines, cheered for their favorite candidates as both men entered the ministry building from opposite doors.

“Hashemi is here! Thank God, we are saved!” shouted Reza Raeesi, a journalist for the newspaper Arman, which is critical of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Mr. Rafsanjani was crushed by Mr. Ahmadinejad in the 2005 elections, and for a long time it seemed as if he no longer played a significant role in Iranian politics.