Iran Elections: Conservative Candidate and Tehran Mayor Ghalibaf Withdraws from Race

Iran's presidential election became a two-man race Tuesday when the country's incumbent vice president and Tehran's mayor dropped out ahead of Friday's vote.

Eshaq Jahangiri, senior vice president under Rouhani, dropped out, leaving just four candidates in the race ahead of Friday's vote.

Rouhani said Monday that he needed a strong victory to gain the mandate to carry out changes leading to more personal freedoms, something he promised in his first campaign but was never able to deliver.

"Not all of Qalibaf's supporters will move to Raisi, but he does provide some capacity for conservatives to unite", said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Rouhani remains the favorite as every Iranian president since 1981, when Khamenei himself took the presidency, has won re-election.

To win, the candidate must score more than 50 percent of the vote.

Mohammad-Baghar Ghalibaf, who has twice before been defeated in presidential elections, issued a statement on Monday saying he was stepping aside to bolster the campaign of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. "In Tehran, his votes will go mainly to Rouhani but outside Tehran his supporters will vote for Raisi".

Accordingly, Qalibaf will accompany Raisi on a provincial trip on May 16 to announce their coalition, Tasnim news agency reported on May 15.

"To me, supporting Dr. Rouhani and voting for him is equal to supporting the mighty Iranian nation", Jahangiri told the Tehran Times.

This election marked Mr. Qalibaf's third presidential campaign, having previously lost running to the left of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and to the right of Mr. Rouhani in 2013. "Qalibaf speaks more to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and security apparatus, Raisi more to the traditional conservative". Rouhani's (or, rather the Pragmatists') challenge is that the détente pursued with the West, i.e. conceding on nuclear development in return for partial sanctions relief, has not delivered as much economic benefit as hoped for.

The former prosecutor is now head of a multi-billion-dollar charitable foundation that manages donations to Iran's holiest shrine in the city of Mashhad.