"The heart of the election is the competition. If you take that out, you'll have a corpse."
Thus Iranian President Hassan Rohani, in the aftermath of the exclusion by the Conservative-dominated Guardian Council of the main moderate and reformist candidates in the presidential elections on June 18.
The head of the outgoing government, who cannot reappear having reached the limit of two terms, also confirmed that he had written to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to ask for "help" on the matter.