Rouhani Tells Critics Their ‘Era Is Over' As Iran Vote Nears

- Golnar Motevalli with Ladane Nasseri

President Hassan Rouhani hit out at hardline opponents after conservative-controlled newspapers filled their front pages with critical coverage of his encounter with grieving miners less than two weeks before he seeks re-election.

We’re in these elections to “tell the extremists and those who use violence that your era is over,” he said in an election campaign speech in the western city of Hamedan. “You ran this country for eight years and the people saw what you did,” the semi-official

Iranian Students’ News Agency reported him as saying.“We want freedom,” Rouhani said, in an apparent swipe at rivals who oppose greater social liberties in the Islamic Republic. “Your rationale is one of just banning things.”

Earlier this month, Rouhani, 68, faced anguished miners as he visited a coal mine where an explosion killed more than three dozen men. Conservative news outlets seized on video footage purportedly showing the president’s car being surrounded and jumped on by men as it arrived at the mine.

His trip to the northwest was part of a nationwide push to shore up support outside of Iran’s biggest cities ahead of the 19 May vote. His leading challengers, hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi and conservative Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, have attacked Rouhani’s record, in particular the delay in turning the 2015 nuclear deal into better living standards for the majority.

Both candidates have said they would respect the accord if elected but a conservative victory could undermine efforts to attract foreign investment and make relations with the West, and especially the US, more confrontational. Oil output has recovered under the nuclear deal, the economy is growing again and rapid price gains have subsided. Yet the hoped for surge in foreign investment hasn’t happened.