The leading candidates for Iran's June 14 presidential election, for which registration closed on Saturday.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani: The centrist Rafsanjani, an important figure since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, was president from 1989 to 1997. He earned the ire of hardliners after he sided with reformists during the unrest that followed the disputed 2009 election, and has seen two of his children jailed in recent months. 

Last-minute entry rattles Iranian race

Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie: Former chief-of-staff to outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is viewed with intense suspicion by conservatives who say he leads a "deviant current" within Iranian politics that seeks to sideline the ruling clerics. They consider Mashaie and Ahmadinejad to be right-wing populists. 

Saeed Jalili: Iran's nuclear negotiator since 2007 is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and seen as a hardline conservative close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Hassan Rohani: A moderate Muslim cleric, he also served as Iran's nuclear negotiator, presiding over talks with Britain, France and Germany that saw Tehran agree to suspend uranium enrichment-related activities between 2003 and 2005. He is seen as close to Rafsanjani. 

Ali Akbar Velayati: Served as foreign minister from 1981 to 1997 and advises Khamenei on foreign policy matters. He is seen as a traditional conservative, with ties both to 'principlist' factions - loyal to the supreme leader - and to Rafsanjani's camp. 

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf: A former police chief, he is the current mayor of Tehran and has a reputation as a competent, charismatic manager who could attract Iran's sizeable youth vote. He is viewed as a pragmatic conservative. 

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel: A former parliament speaker and relative of Khamenei by marriage, he is a close adviser to the Supreme Leader. 

Mohsen Rezaie: The veteran politician and former Revolutionary Guards commander ran in 2009 against Ahmadinejad and lost. He is the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, which advises Khamenei.

TEL AVIV -- Amid a heated war of words between Israel and Iran over the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions, one musician is hoping that an unconventional weapon will help cool the tensions.

Iranian-born Israeli Menashe Sasson, 67, broadcasts traditional Persian melodies for an audience in his old home country from a studio in Israel. He hears a note of optimism in the melancholic music and believes it can help Iranians and Israelis overcome the rhetoric of hate.

Every Friday morning, Sasson makes his way to Radio RadisIn in Rishon Lezion, a city south of Tel Aviv, and removes an ancient instrument called a santur from a large case. Sasson, dressed formally in a jacket and tie, taps gently on the strings with a pair of slender hammers and produces a delicate sound that is instantly evocative of the Middle East.

Sasson and his beloved santur moved to Israel 50 years ago but he was born in Isfahan, an Iranian town that is both a center of the Jewish population in Iran and home to one of the country's nuclear research facilities.

"I hope that my music can one day bring the hearts of both nations together," he said.

Amir Shai, who founded Radio RadisIn four-and-a-half years ago, feels a similar sense of mission.

"I had one main goal: to introduce the Israeli culture to the Iranians," Shai said. "For years the Iranian leadership poisoned the Iranian people with lies about Israel. It's time to change this."

Paul Goldman / NBC News

Manashe Sasson says he hopes his ancient santur music will "bring the hearts of both nations together."

Shai sees his radio station as a bridge between two nations in desperate need of better communication, and Sasson and his santur play a big part.

While not a household name in Iran, Sasson says he receives hundreds of emails from fans there. "There are a lot of peace-loving Iranians who contact me knowing I'm an Israeli. They're encouraging me and this warms my heart," he said.

There is some dispute over the size of the Jewish community in Iran. It has shrunk considerably since the Islamic Revolution but remains the biggest Jewish community outside of Israel in the Middle East.

Sasson hopes the situation for Jews in Iran will change.

"Iran is a beautiful country that has become the biggest prison in the world. It's like time has stopped there," he said. "The Iranian people deserve freedom.''

Related:

• Full Israel coverage from NBC News.com
• Full Iran coverage from NBC News

Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters, file

A guard stands watch at Tehran's Evin Prison in 2006. A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists says that Iran has cracked down harshly on reporters ahead of the June presidential election. The group says most of those jailed are held at Evin, where at least three journalists have died in the past four years.

Iran has launched a campaign to intimidate and imprison journalists ahead of the June 14 presidential election, according to a new report from a New York-based advocacy group.

The wave of arrests began on Jan. 27, when authorities detained at least 14 journalists affiliated with reformist publications, according to the report, released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Another 23 journalists had been arrested by early March, it said.

An April 15 audit by the group found that at least 40 journalists were behind bars as part of what it called “the government’s continuing determination to silence independent coverage of public affairs.”

Michael Stuparyk / Toronto Star via Getty Images, f

Hossein Derakhshan, shown in Canada in 2006, was a blogger who tried to help fellow Iranians create their own blogs. He has been held at Tehran's Evin Prison since November 2008 and has been tortured and kept for long periods in solitary confinement.

Charges against them included insulting the president, spreading anti-Iranian propaganda, and in one case, “waging war against God.”

Intimidation of journalists -- including beatings, long periods in solitary confinement and denial of family visits and health care -- has had a chilling effect on the free flow of information, the report says, noting that government has blocked “millions” of websites.

Iran has also recently banned some reformist publications and arrested their leaders.

A particularly harsh crackdown on dissenting voices began in March, after Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi announced that 600 Iranian journalists were part of an anti-government network and that many were being arrested to "prevent the emergence of sedition prior to the elections," the report says.

Farideh Farhi, a University of Hawaii scholar who has written extensively about Iran, said the arrests are part of an effort to disrupt links between reporters inside Iran and their Farsi-speaking counterparts abroad, the report says.

The effort may stem from the 2009 election, when observers representing the candidates passed on reports of fraud to local reporters, who then relayed the information to colleagues outside the country, the report says, adding that those links are likely to be broken during the coming election.

Raheb Homavandi / Reuters, file

Iran's Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, right, announced in March that 600 Iranian journalists were part of an anti-government network and that many were being arrested to "prevent the emergence of sedition prior to the elections."

 “The intent,” Farhi says in the report, “is to make sure that reporters inside Iran will hesitate to answer their phones or Skype when Persian-speaking reporters based outside of Iran call to figure out what's going on.”

There is evidence that the tactics have worked. Reporters inside Iran are careful what they say, even in telephone calls, and may be reluctant to write stories critical of the government.

The situation has gotten markedly worse under the rule of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the report said.

In 2004, the last full year of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s term, the group said its annual prison census documented just one jailed journalist. In December 2009, after a disputed election returned Ahmadinejad to office, 23 imprisoned journalists were documented. Surveys since then have consistently shown 35 to 50 journalists behind bars at any given time, the report says.

Under Ahmadinejad’s rule, at least three journalists have died in prison and many more have been tortured, while at least 68 have fled into exile, the group said.

An attempt to get comments from Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, which must be contacted by email, was unsuccessful.

As of Wednesday night in Tehran's time zone, Iran’s state news agency had not mentioned the report.

The semi-official Fars News Agency, however, has previously reported on research by the Committee to Protect Journalists. A December article focused on the finding that Turkey had jailed more journalists, 49, than any other country that year. The article did not mention that the second-highest number of journalists, 45, were jailed in Iran.

Related:

• Negotiator to run against Ahmadinejad
• Diplomat: US, Iran still 'a long way apart'
• Read more Iran coverage from NBC News

News Analysis

TEL AVIV, Israel –  Syrian rebels have cheered Israel’s strikes against Syrian government facilities, while the Syrian government has said the attacks prove Israel is backing the rebels.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Israel is not engaging in the Syrian civil war. Instead, it is striking early blows in Israel’s possible next war: against Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

“This attack had nothing to do with the Syrian civil war. The big story is Iran and Hezbollah, not Syria,” Professor Eyal Zisser, a Syrian expert at Tel Aviv University, told NBC News Monday.

“Israel’s message is that we want to change the rules of the game. For the last 20 years Iran provided all kinds of weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. Now this is the end of the story. Israel will no longer accept the rearming of Hezbollah,” Zisser added.

Analysts here say there are four weapons systems on Israel’s blacklist, whose transfer through Syria would trigger air attacks: guided ground to ground rockets like the Iranian Fateh 110’s reportedly destroyed in this weekend’s attack; chemical weapons; land to sea missiles like Russian Yakhont missiles that can hit a ship 200 miles at sea at speeds of up to Mach 2; and anti-aircraft rockets like the SAM 17s that would endanger Israel’s control of the skies.

Israeli analysts have taken to calling these weapons “game-changers,” whose transfer must be stopped at any price. But others point out that fearsome as they are, Israel has answers to all of them and is in no real danger of losing its superiority against a relatively small outfit like Hezbollah.

Where is Syria’s ‘red line’?
So the public debate in Israel, which the military has kept out of, revolves around this question: Where is Syria’s so –called “red line”? At what point will Israel’s attacks against targets inside Syria provoke the Syrian leadership into retaliating against Israel? Is Israel walking a tightrope that will lead inevitably to a sudden clash with Syria?

Israel takes comfort in its intelligence assessment that President Bashar al-Assad would rather absorb the blows and the humiliation than confront Israel. The assumption is that Assad knows any confrontation would lead to a brutal Israeli attack, probably against his air force and air fields, and that would lead to his defeat at the hands of the Syrian rebels.

But Israel is also in a quandary about its best interests: What is better for Israel: Syria under the Iranian-backed leadership of Assad? Syria under a rebel-Sunni-Islamist coalition? Or, most likely, the breakup of Syria into ethnic and religious cantons?

With no clear answer, Israel is electing to stay well out of it.

Its actions against Hezbollah on Syrian soil could backfire if Syria chooses to retaliate. So far, there is no real sign of that – although reports from Syria this weekend suggest that Syrian missiles are now trained on Israel.

But while maintaining a heightened state of alert, and positioning two Iron Dome anti-missile systems in the northern towns of Haifa and Safed, Israel is also downplaying any threat, its citizens are paying little attention, and an order to civilian aircraft to stay out of the northern skies is expected to be lifted today.

Related links

US official: Syrian rebels lack 'ability or intent' to use chemical weapons

Israel to Syria's Assad: Airstrikes not aimed at helping rebels

Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria

Bilal Hussein / AP

Pro-Syrian-government fighters from Lebanon stand guard at the border of the two countries on April 12. The head of Lebanon-based Hezbollah has threatened that his heavily armed group, backed by Iran, may become further involved in the battle against forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

BEIRUT -- The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group said Tuesday that Syrian rebels will not be able to defeat President Bashar Assad's regime militarily, warning that Syria's "real friends," including his Iranian-backed militant group, were ready to intervene on the government's side.

Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim group, is known to back Syrian regime fighters in Shiite villages near the Lebanon border against the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad. The comments by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah were the strongest indication yet that his group was ready to get far more involved to rescue Assad's embattled regime.

"You will not be able to take Damascus by force and you will not be able to topple the regime militarily. This is a long battle," Nasrallah said, addressing the Syrian opposition.

Slideshow: Syria uprising

/

A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

"Syria has real friends in the region and in the world who will not allow Syria to fall into the hands of America or Israel."

Hezbollah and Iran are close allies of Assad. Rebels have accused them of sending fighters to assist Syrian troops trying to crush the two-year-old anti-Assad uprising, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people.

Deeper and more overt Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian conflict is almost certain to threaten stability in Lebanon, which is sharply split along sectarian lines, and between supporters and opponents of Assad. It also risks drawing in Israel and Iran into a wider Middle East war.

Nasrallah said Tuesday there are no Iranian forces in Syria now, except for some experts who he said have been in Syria for decades. But he added: "What do you imagine would happen in the future if things deteriorate in a way that requires the intervention of the forces of resistance in this battle?"

Hezbollah has an arsenal that makes the group the most powerful military force in Lebanon, stronger than the national army. Its growing involvement in the Syrian civil war is already raising tensions inside the divided country and has drawn threats from enraged Syrian rebels and militants.

Nasrallah also said his fighters had a duty to protect the holy Shiite shrine of Sayida Zeinab, named for the granddaughter of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and located south of Damascus.

He said rebels have captured several villages around the shrine and have threatened to destroy it.

"If the shrine is destroyed things will get out of control," Nasrallah said, citing the 2006 bombing of the Shiite al-Askari shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra. That attack was blamed on al Qaeda in Iraq and set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists that left thousands of Iraqis dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

In recent weeks, government troops have overrun two rebel-held Damascus suburbs and a town outside the capital. They also have captured several villages near the border with Lebanon as part of their efforts to secure the strategic corridor running from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, which is the heartland of the president's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Related:

• Obama: 'Some evidence' Syria used chemical weapons
• Bomb blast in Syria's capital kills at least 13
• 6 killed as bomb targets Syria's prime minister

Matthew David Kohn / AP

Mojtaba Atarodi will reportedly return to Iran on Saturday.

MUSCAT, Oman -- An Iranian scientist held for more than a year in California on charges of violating U.S. sanctions arrived in Muscat on Friday, after being freed in what the Omani foreign ministry said was a humanitarian gesture.

Mojtaba Atarodi, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, had been detained for allegedly buying high-tech U.S. laboratory equipment, according to previous Iranian media reports.

The U.S. sanctions are linked to Tehran's disputed nuclear program, which it says is for peaceful purposes only but Washington says is aimed at manufacturing a nuclear weapon.

Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said Atarodi would return home on Saturday.

Oman, a U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state which enjoys good relations with Tehran, has previously helped mediate the release of Western prisoners held by the Islamic republic.

Authorities in the Sultanate had worked with U.S. officials to speed up Atarodi's case and return him home, the Omani foreign ministry said in a statement carried by local media. It said Oman would provide medical attention for Atarodi until his return to Iran, giving no further details.

He had been released after follow-ups by Iran's foreign ministry, that ministry's spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).

Iran and the United States severed relations after the overthrow of Iran's pro-Western monarchy in 1979.

Iran freed two U.S. citizens who had been sentenced to eight years in jail for spying into Omani custody in September 2011.

Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were among three people arrested while hiking along the Iraq-Iran border in 2009 were flown to Oman after officials there helped secure their release by posting bail of $1 million. They denied being spies.

The third, Sarah Shourd, was freed in September 2010, also by way of Oman.

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 26, 2013 4:25 AM EDT

TEL AVIV – American and Israeli defense officials welcomed a new arms sale agreement on Monday as a major step toward increasing Israel’s military strength, but Israeli officials said it still left them without the weapons they would need if they decided to attack Iran’s deepest and best-protected nuclear sites.

Jim Watson / AFP-Getty Images

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon speak during a helicopter tour above the Golan Heights on April 22, 2013. Hagel met his counterpart to put the finishing touches on a major arms deal and for talks on Syria's civil war and the Iranian nuclear threat.

The mixed message came as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Israeli counterpart, Moshe Yaalon, reaffirmed their commitment to stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, while sidestepping a continuing disagreement between the two countries about how close to allow Iran to get toward such a goal.

In public, Mr. Hagel again said that Israel had the right to decide by itself how to defend the country, and both officials said military action should be a last resort. But a close adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that “the fundamental difference of views on how much risk we can take with Iran is re-emerging.”

The new weapons sale package includes aircraft for midair refueling and missiles that can cripple an adversary’s air defense system. Both would be critical for Israel if it were to decide on a unilateral attack on Iran.

But what the Israelis wanted most was a weapons system that is missing from the package: a giant bunker-busting bomb designed to penetrate earth and reinforced concrete to destroy deeply buried sites. According to both American and Israeli analysts, it is the only weapon that would have a chance of destroying the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment center at Fordow, which is buried more than 200 feet under a mountain outside the holy city of Qum.

The weapon, called a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, weighs about 30,000 pounds — so much that Israel does not have any aircraft capable of carrying it. To do so, they would need a B-2 bomber, the stealth aircraft that the United States flew nonstop recently from Missouri to the Korean Peninsula to underscore to North Korea that it could reach their nuclear sites.

The Obama administration has been reluctant to even discuss selling such capability to the Israelis.

Iran has consistently denied that it wants nuclear weapons and has called its uranium enrichment activities peaceful.

The Fordow site has become an increasing source of concern to the Israelis. When they referred last year to Iran entering a “zone of immunity,” Israeli officials said the phrase referred to the moment when the facility would be complete, and immune from attack by Israeli forces. All the centrifuges that enrich uranium at the site have since been installed, but only about a quarter of them are now operating.

Israel has asked the United States for weapons like the Massive Ordnance Penetrator in the past and has been turned down. American officials declined to say whether the yearlong negotiations with Israel that resulted in the new arms package had included a discussion of the new bomb.

Instead, they pointed to a decision by President Obama to send advanced refueling tanker planes to Israel that would make it possible for the country’s fighter aircraft to reach as far as Iran. A similar refueling capability was turned down during the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The debate is about more than just equipment. Israel’s position has been that Iran cannot be allowed to build up too large a stockpile of medium-enriched uranium that could allow it to then race for a bomb. When Mr. Netanyahu addressed the United Nations in New York last September, he drew a red line across a cartoon picture of a bomb, which aides later said indicated that Iran would not be allowed to amass enough medium-enriched uranium to get enough fuel to make a single weapon.

But most of Iran’s production of that uranium is occurring inside the mountain at Fordow. So far, Iran has stayed just below Mr. Netanyahu’s red line, converting some of the fuel to a metallic form that can be used in a nuclear reactor – but that would take a bit more time to convert back to bomb fuel. To the United States, this has offered up more time for a diplomatic solution. To many Israeli officials, it is a ploy, designed to buy time as Iran installs a new generation of centrifuges that could speed its production.

“It’s all about timetables,” said Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s inner circle of strategists. “If you say the goal is to halt Iran in the enrichment phase, you don’t have much time. If you are waiting for Iran to weaponize” — the position the Obama administration has taken – “maybe you can give it another year or more.”

Mr. Yaalon suggested that there was still time. “There are other tools to be used and to be exhausted, whether it is diplomacy, economic sanctions,” Mr. Yaalon said.

He avoided mentioning another element of the strategy: sabotage of the Iranian program, which has included cyberattacks on enrichment facilities and the assassination of Iranian scientists. He urged support for Iranians who oppose the current government in Tehran, especially in advance of a presidential election scheduled for June.

But without “a credible military option,” Mr. Yaalon warned, “there is no chance” that the Iranian government would curtail its nuclear ambitions.

During a news conference with Mr. Yaalon at the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Mr. Hagel pledged that the United States would sustain its commitment to assuring Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” and he was emphatic in discussing Iran.

“Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Hagel said. “Period.”

That was far more definitive than anything he said in his confirmation hearing. There he talked about a strategy of containing Iran – a strategy that seemed at odds with Mr. Obama’s stated position — before correcting himself for the record to align with the administration’s position.

The United States has promised Israel $3.1 billion in military financial assistance in this fiscal year, the highest amount ever. Mr. Hagel cited the $460 million the United States has already given to Israel for its missile-defense systems and noted the $220 million request for the next fiscal year.

After his meetings in Tel Aviv, Mr. Hagel toured northern Israel by helicopter, crossing into the Golan Heights occupied by Israeli forces. The flight took him within a couple miles of the Syrian side of their disputed border and about 30 miles from the Syrian capital, Damascus.

On Monday evening, Amos Yadlin, the former head of military intelligence in Israel, told the annual conference of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, that while any Israeli attack would only delay Iran’s program, “this delay could be important because we may have a regime change.”

Mr. Yadlin, now the executive director of the institute, described the tactical differences between the United States and Israel on dealing with Iran as a “time gap.”

“Israel has defined what the trigger is, what the red line is,” he said. Iran, he concluded, “is already there.”

This story, "No Bunker-Buster Bomb in Israel’s U.S. Arms Deal," first appeared in The New York Times.

QUETTA, Pakistan - Powerful aftershocks rocked the border between Iran and Pakistan Wednesday, a day after a major earthquake tore through the region, collapsing buildings and killing at least 39 people and injuring more than 170.

The Pakistani town of Mashkel was “totally destroyed,” according to a local journalist at the scene. Reporter Farooq Kabdani said almost all of the town's mud houses and shops had collapsed. He suggested the death toll could climb as about 25 people remained missing.

Tuesday’s major quake, rated at magnitude 7.8 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.5 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Agency, was centered about 50 miles east of the city of Khash, Iran, but shook tall buildings as far away as New Delhi, nearly 1,500 miles away.

Fifteen seriously injured victims have evacuated to the Central Military hospital Quetta by the Pakistan Army.The victims range in age from 3 to 50 years old.

It was described by Iranian media as the worst in 50 years, but the majority of confirmed casualties appeared to be on the Pakistan side of the border.

Officials in Mashkel District in Pakistan's Balochistan province said 38 people were killed there, while 170 were injured, including 30 in critical condition.

Banaras Khan / AFP - Getty Images

Earthquake survivors stand on the rubble of their collapsed mud houses in the Mashkel area of southwest Pakistan, Wednesday.

Iran’s state-run Press TV reported one confirmed Iranian death, noting that initial reports had suggested a much higher death toll. A hospital in the Iranian city of Saravan, which is close to the epicenter, reported 10 fatalities on Tuesday. 

Washuk Khan Mohammad, the local deputy commissioner, said the Mashkel area was hit by two more aftershocks on Wednesday, which he said measured 6.5 and 4.4 on the richter scale, causing more damage.

Conditions in Mashkel, which lies south-west of Quetta, were described as “miserable” by Kabdani. The area is “totally destroyed,” he added.

While the earthquake's epicenter was in a thinly populated area, the USGS estimated that about 400,000 people live in areas where the shaking was very strong to severe; 1.7 million live in areas where it was considered strong; and another 2.6 million are in territories where it was classified as moderate.

The State Department expressed its condolences for the lives lost in the earthquake.

"The United States sends our deepest condolences for those lost in the earthquake in southeastern Iran and western Pakistan today," a statement released Tuesday read. "Our thoughts are with the families of those who were killed, those who were injured, and with those communities that have suffered damage to homes and property. We stand ready to offer assistance in this difficult time."

The Tehran Geophysics Center said the quake lasted 40 seconds and described it as the country's strongest in more than 50 years.

An April 9 earthquake near the country's only nuclear power plant killed 37 people and injured at least 850 more, leaving entire villages devastated.

Despite the scare caused by that quake, Iran pledged that it would continue to build more reactors in the heavily seismic region, which is hundreds of miles from the site of the latest temblor, on the other side of the country's south.

Iran has a history of devastating earthquakes. A magnitude-6.6 quake in 2003 killed an estimated 31,000 people, and a 7.5 in 1990 killed as many as 50,000, according to the USGS.

NBC News' Ali Arouzi contributed to this report.

Related:

What caused latest deadly earthquake in Iran?

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 17, 2013 5:50 AM EDT

Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA

Former chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, center, arrives at a conference in Tehran on Thursday where he announced his candidacy for the June presidential election. Rowhani is considered a moderate who could work with the West.

Hassan Rowhani, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator, announced on Thursday he would run for president - becoming the most moderate contender so far to bid to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a June election dominated by conservatives.

The 64-year-old was head of the powerful Supreme National Security Council under presidents Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, considered a master of realpolitik rather than an ideologue, and Mohammad Khatami, who pushed for wide-ranging social and political reforms.

Rowhani, a Muslim cleric, presided over talks with Britain, France and Germany that saw Iran agree to suspend uranium enrichment-related activities between 2003 and 2005.

He resigned after Ahmadinejad took office in August that year. The nuclear work was resumed and Rowhani was derided for being too accommodating in negotiations.

Slideshow: Everyday life in Iran

At schools, in shops, and on the streets of big cities and small towns, daily life plays out in Iran.

Launch slideshow

During Ahmadinejad's two terms in office, tensions with the West over Iran's nuclear program have worsened, with the United States and Europe imposing sanctions on its oil and banks over suspicions Tehran is seeking atomic arms, which it denies.

"We need a new management for the country but not based on quarrelling, inconsistency and eroding domestic capacity, but through unity, consensus and attracting honest and efficient people," Rowhani told a gathering of supporters on Thursday, Iran's Mehr news agency reported.

A former Western ambassador to Iran who had dealings with Rowhani during the Khatami administration described him as "approachable and no-nonsense," likely to be "a calm, orthodox, efficient and straightforward servant ... and less a charismatic or an independent figure."

With nuclear policy directed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rather than the president, the election is not likely to produce any tangible policy shift there.

"My government will be one of prudence and hope and my message is about saving the economy, reviving ethics and interaction with the world," Rowhani said in a critique of Ahmadinejad's economic record.

Hooman Majd, a New York-based Iranian-American journalist and author, said Rowhani -- head of an Iranian think-tank, the Center for Strategic Research -- might attract some voters looking for change, without being radical enough to risk being banned from the election.

"Rowhani has been a loyal soldier of Khamenei and is not considered a threat to the system. I think it would be too much for the Guardian Council to disqualify someone like that," Majd said.

Khamenei's close advisers plan to put forward their own candidate, hoping to minimize the chances of the next president mounting challenges to the leader's authority, as they accuse Ahmadinejad of doing, especially during his second term.

Related:

After quake, Iran says it will build more reactors

Earthquake strikes near Iran's nuclear plant

Diplomat: Iran, West still 'a long way apart'