Iran elections candidates: Mohsen Mehralizadeh

Iran Focus:Mehralizadeh, perhaps the most obscure candidate in the race, is a Vice-President in the present administration of President Mohammad Khatami, serving as the head of the National Sports Organization. Of the eight candidates cleared by the Guardians Council to run in the upcoming June 17 Presidential elections, Mehralizadeh is one of five former top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. He was was a regional commander of the ideological army from 1979 to 1981. Iran Focus

Age: 49 (Born in 1956)

Position: Vice-President and head of the National Sports Organization

Career Highlights:

Mehralizadeh, perhaps the most obscure candidate in the race, is a Vice-President in the present administration of President Mohammad Khatami, serving as the head of the National Sports Organization.

Of the eight candidates cleared by the Guardians Council to run in the upcoming June 17 Presidential elections, Mehralizadeh is one of five former top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. He was a regional commander of the ideological army from 1979 to 1981.

In 1979, he set up the Revolutionary Committee in the northwestern city of Maragheh and for two years ran the clerical regime’s security forces in the area, where a large number of dissidents were arrested and some were executed.

He was also a deputy for Power Plants of the Atomic Energy Organization from 1993 to 1995 overseeing much of Tehran’s clandestine nuclear activities which were only revealed in 2002 by an Iranian opposition group.

Another major post he held was as Governor of Khorrasan Province from 1997 to 2001.

He is a member of Islamic Iran Participation Front.