Three banned politicians are having an outsized impact on Iran’s presidential election – with their legacies benefiting President Hassan Rouhani. The three – former President Mohammad Khatami, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and former Parliamentary Speaker Mehdi Karroubi – are all reformists. Khatami has been banned from media appearances and travel. Mousavi and Karroubi, who both ran for president in 2009, have been under house arrest since 2011 for supporting the Green Movement protests two years earlier.

The following are polls by various organizations on the upcoming May 19 presidential election. 

IPPO Group

Click here for more information.

The Iranian Labour News Agency

In a gesture of good will, firefighters from Tehran’s Station 55 held a memorial for William N. Tolley, a 14-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department. Tolley died on April 20 after falling five stories while fighting an apartment fire in Queens.

The economy is the most important issue for Iranian voters in the upcoming election, according to a new study by IranPoll.com. Some 42 percent of respondents said unemployment is the number one challenge that the next president should address, followed by youth unemployment and other economic problems. Citizens’ perceptions about the economy are likely to play a critical role in the May 19 presidential election.

On April 18, the Trump administration announced the launch of an interagency review of whether sanctions relief for Iran, as part of the nuclear deal, is vital to U.S. national security interests. Iran committed to significantly curbing its nuclear program and taking greater steps towards transparency in exchange for sanctions relief as part of the 2015 agreement, also known as at the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

On April 10-11, the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the High Representative of the European Union met in Lucca, Italy to discuss pressing issues that impact global peace and security. The so-called Group of Seven (G7) is an informal bloc of industrialized democracies expressed support for the Iran nuclear deal and called on Tehran to comply with its international human rights obligations. The following is the relevant excerpt from the G7’s final communique from the meeting.

On April 13, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Tehran Prison Organization and Sohrab Soleimani, a senior official within Iran’s State Prison Organization. The announcement cited an April 2014 incident at the infamous Evin Prison, when dozens of security guards and prison officials attacked political prisoners in Ward 350 for several hours.

The following is the press release from the European Council on renewed sanctions.

On 11 April 2017, the Council extended until 13 April 2018 its restrictive measures responding to serious human rights violations in Iran. These measures consist of: