A former speaker of Iran's parliament registered Saturday to run in the Islamic Republic's upcoming presidential election, becoming the first high-profile candidate to potentially back the policies of the outgoing administration that reached Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.
The decision by Ali Larijani, long a prominent conservative voice who later allied himself with Iran's relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani, came on the last day of registration for the June 18 election. While a panel overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ultimately will approve candidates, Larijani has maintained close ties to the cleric over his decades in government.
Journalists in Tehran watched Larijani, 63, register at the Interior Ministry, which oversees elections. He waved to onlookers after completing the process, his face covered by a blue surgical mask as Iran continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
Larijani, a former commander in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, previously served as the minister of culture and Islamic guidance and as the head of Iran's state broadcaster. Under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he served as secretary of Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council for two years, and as a senior nuclear negotiator. He later became speaker of the Iranian parliament for some 12 years, stepping down in May 2020.
Larijani's family includes prominent members of Iran's theocracy, with his cleric brother once serving as the head of the Iranian judiciary. His father was a prominent ayatollah.
Larijani had an active role in signing a 25-year strategic agreement with China earlier this year. On Friday, as a sign of respect, Larijani reportedly asked permission to run from high-ranking clerics in the religious city of Qom.
Within Iran, candidates exist on a political spectrum that broadly includes hard-liners who want to expand Iran’s nuclear program, moderates who hold onto the status quo, and reformists who want to change the theocracy from within.
Those calling for radical change find themselves blocked from even running for office by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel that vets and approves candidates under Khamenei’s watch.
“Like outgoing President Rouhani, Larijani is someone Khamenei trusts to represent Iran without compromising the regime’s basic tenets of religious supervision over society and independence from foreign powers,” Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, wrote recently.
A clear candidate has yet to emerge within the reformists. Some have mentioned Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, though he later said he wouldn't run after a scandal over a leaked recording in which he offered frank criticism of the Guard and the limits of the civilian government’s power.
At the same time Larijani registered, so too did Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the eldest son of the late former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani, a member of Tehran's city council, has been described as a reformist by political commentators.
Several other candidates have prominent backgrounds in the Guard, a paramilitary force answerable only to Khamenei. Hard-liners have increasingly suggested a former military commander should be president given the country’s problems, something that hasn’t happened since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the purge of the armed forces that followed.
Iran’s former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also registered Wednesday. Though his attempt to run in 2017 ultimately was blocked after Khamenei criticized Ahmadinejad, this year the supreme leader has not warned him off.
Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive on the city of Rafah.
Khan Younis has been targeted by repeated Israeli military operations over recent weeks. Israel has said it plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah during an anticipated offensive on the southern city, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge during the war, now in its seventh month. The military said it was not involved in the tent construction.
On Monday, a failed rocket strike was launched at a base housing U.S.-led coalition forces at Rumalyn, Syria, marking the first time since Feb. 4 that Iranian-backed militias have attacked a U.S. facility in Iraq or Syria, a U.S. defense official said. No personnel were injured in the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility.
The conflict has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the U.S. against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran traded fire directly this month, raising fears of all-out war.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction. Around 80% of the territory’s population have fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a $26 billion aid package on Saturday that includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of famine, as well as billions for Israel. The U.S. Senate could pass the package as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.
Currently:
— Satellite photos suggest Iran air defense radar struck during apparent Israeli attack on Isfahan
— Review of U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees found Israel did not express concern about staff
— Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
— Israel's chief of military intelligence resigns, citing failure to prevent Oct. 7 attacks
Here is the latest:
CAIRO — Ireland’s top diplomat has condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing of Gaza,” saying the civilian toll of its war against Hamas is “unacceptable.”
Speaking in a joint news conference with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said the killing of women and children is “unconscionable.”
He mentioned an airstrike over the weekend on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah that killed 17 children and two women from the same extended family.
“The women and children that are being killed. It’s unconscionable,” he said. “It’s very difficult for me personally as a human being to comprehend that level of barbarity, there can be no justification for it, in my view.”
The minister called for a cease-fire, the release of all hostages captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and flooding the strip with humanitarian aid.
It’s “unacceptable that hostages are taken in this manner,” he said. “And again, we have consistently condemned the taking of hostages.”
BEIRUT — The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday afternoon it had launched an attack on an Israeli base near the city of Acre, considerably farther south than the areas it usually targets, in response to an Israeli airstrike that killed of one of its officials.
The Israeli military said in a statement earlier Tuesday that it had killed Hussein Ali Azqul in an airstrike in south Lebanon and described him as a “significant” operative in Hezbollah’s aerial defense unit. Hezbollah confirmed in a statement that Azqul had been killed.
State media and witnesses said the strike happened in the area of Adloun, between the coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the border with Israel.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and allied groups have been clashing with Israeli forces along the border for more than six months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has regularly carried out targeted killings of Hezbollah and Hamas members in Lebanon, sometimes in areas far from the border.
Hezbollah said the strike it launched was “in response to the Israeli aggression on the town of Adloun” and the “assassination” of Azqul. It said the strike targeted a location about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the border and was the deepest it had launched since the outbreak of the war.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had “successfully intercepted two suspicious aerial targets off the northern coast.”
JERICHO, West Bank — Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man early Tuesday in the West Bank city of Jericho, an eyewitness and Palestinian officials said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as Shadi Jalaita, 44, and said he suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.
His uncle, Shafiq Jalaita, said the man had been outside of his home watching an Israeli military raid taking place at a neighbor’s house in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Suddenly, three gunshots rang out, he said.
“The third bullet hit his chest and came out of his back,” Jalaita said.
The Israeli army has not commented on the shooting.
The Health Ministry said a child also was shot in the stomach in Jericho and was in critical condition. No further details were available.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7. Since then, at least 487 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the territory, the Ramallah-based Health Ministry said.
DOHA, Qatar — Qatar is in a “reevaluation phase” when it comes to trying to mediate talks between Israel and Hamas over a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
“We need to see seriousness from everyone,” Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, told a news conference Tuesday.
He also said discussions were ongoing about Hamas’ ongoing presence in Qatar.
The militant group has had a political office in Doha, Qatar, for years, but the Wall Street Journal has reported in recent days that Hamas could leave the country as the talks remain deadlocked. Hamas has denied that the group was considering leaving Qatar.
Associated Press writer Lujain Jo contributed to this report.
The United Nations’ human rights chief is renewing a warning against a large-scale Israeli offensive in the city of Rafah and decrying recent Israeli strikes on the city.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said that a large incursion into Rafah “would risk more deaths, injuries and displacement on a large scale – even further atrocity crimes, for which those responsible would be held accountable,” his office said in a statement.
Türk deplored three strikes in Rafah in recent days that reportedly killed mostly women and children. He said that “the world’s leaders stand united on the imperative of protecting the civilian population trapped in Rafah.”
Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against the Hamas militant group to the city on the border with Egypt despite calls for restraint, including from the U.S.
BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on a car in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed a Hezbollah official.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had killed Hussein Ali Azqul in the strike and described him as a “significant” operative in Hezbollah’s aerial defense unit. Hezbollah confirmed in a statement that Azqul had been killed.
State media and witnesses said the strike happened in the area of Adloun, between the coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the border with Israel.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and allied groups have been clashing with Israeli forces along the border for more than six months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has regularly carried out targeted killings of Hezbollah and Hamas members in Lebanon, sometimes in areas far from the border.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday the bodies of 32 people killed by Israeli strikes have been brought to local hospitals over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 59 wounded, it said in its daily report.
That brings the overall Palestinian death toll from the Israel-Hamas war to at least 34,183, the ministry said. Another 77,143 have been injured, it said.
The Health Ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its tallies, but has said that women and children make up around two thirds of those killed.
The Israeli military says it has killed 13,000 militants, without providing evidence to back up the claim.
BEIRUT — An apparent Israeli airstrike on a car in southern Lebanon killed at least one person Tuesday, officials said.
State media and witnesses said the strike happened in the area of Adloun, between the coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the border with Israel.
It was not immediately clear who was killed.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and allied groups have been clashing with Israeli forces along the border for more than six months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on Tuesday’s strike. Israel has regularly carried out targeted killings of Hezbollah and Hamas members in Lebanon, sometimes in areas far from the border.
JERUSALEM — Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive targeting the city of Rafah.
Images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show the tent compound starting to be fully under construction on April 16 just west of Khan Younis. Images taken Sunday show the tent compound in the time since has grown.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it was not involved in the tent construction near Khan Younis. The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, without attributing the information, said that Egypt was constructing the tent compound ahead of a possible Rafah offensive.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday about the tents. However, their construction comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened “additional painful blows” targeting Hamas over the breakdown of talks over trying to free the remaining hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
That could include the long-threatened attack on Rafah, where half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have fled amid the war. The U.S., Israel’s main ally, has repeatedly said any military operation needs to protect civilians.
Netanyahu has said he would order to military to evacuate civilians from Rafah for the offensive, but it is not clear where they could go.
Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this report.
Family and supporters of hostages held in the Gaza Strip hold up their hands, painted red to symbolize blood, to call for the captives' release and to mark 200 days since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 cross-border attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Family and supporters of hostages held in the Gaza Strip hold up their hands, painted red to symbolize blood, to call for the captives' release and to mark 200 days since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 cross-border attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Family and supporters of hostages held in the Gaza Strip hold up their hands, painted red to symbolize blood, to call for the captives' release and to mark 200 days since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 cross-border attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Family and supporters of hostages held in the Gaza Strip hold up their hands, painted red to symbolize blood, to call for the captives' release and to mark 200 days since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 cross-border attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, April 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows tents being constructed near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, April 21, 2024. Satellite photos analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive targeting the city of Rafah. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows tents being constructed near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Satellite photos analyzed Tuesday, April 23, 2024 by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive targeting the city of Rafah. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows tents and other makeshift housing built up around the area of the Tel al-Sultan refugee camp Saturday, April 20, 2024, amid Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Tel al-Sultan is part of the wider urban Rafah refugee camp, one of eight in the Gaza Strip that were built for families displaced during the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows tents being constructed near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, April 21, 2024. Satellite photos analyzed Tuesday, April 23 by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive targeting the city of Rafah. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
FILE - A Russian-made S-300 air defense system sits on display for the annual Defense Week, marking the 37th anniversary of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, at Baharestan Square in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 24, 2017. Satellite photos taken Monday suggest an apparent Israeli retaliatory strike targeting Iran's central city of Isfahan hit a radar system for a Russian-made air defense battery, contradicting repeated denials by officials in Tehran in the time since the assault. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
Burn marks surround what analysts identify as a radar system for a Russian-made S-300 missile battery, center, near an international airport and air base is seen in Isfahan, Iran, Monday, April 22, 2024. Satellite photos taken Monday suggest an apparent Israeli retaliatory strike targeting Iran's central city of Isfahan hit a radar system for a Russian-made air defense battery, contradicting repeated denials by officials in Tehran in the time since the assault. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
The Latest | Tent compound rises in Khan Younis as Israel prepares for Rafah offensive
A missile defense site near an international airport and air base is seen in Isfahan, Iran, Monday, April 22, 2024. Satellite photos taken Monday suggest an apparent Israeli retaliatory strike targeting Iran's central city of Isfahan hit a radar system for a Russian-made air defense battery, contradicting repeated denials by officials in Tehran in the time since the assault. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
The Latest | Tent compound rises in Khan Younis as Israel prepares for Rafah offensive
