Iran: Ahmadinejad forced out of presidential race

Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been forced to pull out of the presidential race before even formally launching his campaign, after a pointed intervention by the Rahbar (Supreme Leader) Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamanei. The populist figure had been seen as one of the main rivals to the incumbent Hassan Rouhani for the election on 17 May 2017. However, in cryptic public comments on 26 September, Khamanei said “a certain person came to me, and I told him not to do a certain thing, believing it would be to the benefit of both the person himself and the country.”