Iran's popular former national police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf announced he would run for president in the June election and said he saw no problem resuming ties with arch foe the United States.
"I have appeared here today to say I am ready to run for the ninth presidential election and volunteer to serve the nation," Qalibaf, 43, said during a press conference.
The announcement was widely expected after Qalibaf, a former head of the air force wing of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and frontline veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, resigned as police chief earlier this month.
"I am a pragmatist, I believe in basic principles, I am not a rightist nor a fundamentalist," he said. "I have no attachments to any conventional political wings."
Iran will vote on June 17 to find a successor to President Mohammad Khatami, who is just months from the end of his final term in office after taking power in 1997.
