7 approved for June 18 presidential election: Iran state TV

TEHRAN: Iran named seven candidates on Tuesday for its

June 18 presidential election

, approving the candidacy of the hard-line cleric running the country's judiciary while barring a former parliament speaker allied to the country's current president.

The decision by Iran's

Guardian Council

puts judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, who ran against President

Hassan Rouhani

in 2017, in the driver's seat for the upcoming vote.

An announcement on state television didn't discuss the fact that former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, a conservative who allied with

Rouhani

in recent years, had been barred. Larijani had been positioning himself as a pragmatic candidate who would back Rouhani's signature 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Also barred was former hard-line President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

and Rouhani's senior Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, a reformist.

State TV earlier quoted Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman of the Guardian Council, as saying ``only seven'' had been approved out of some 590 who registered by the panel of clerics and jurists overseen by Supreme Leader

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

. Kadkhodaei did not name those selected.

In 2017, 1,630 hopefuls registered to run.