TEHERAN - Although conservative war veteran Mohsen Rezaei stands little chance of winning Iran's June 12 presidential election, he is likely to be the choice of voters who want neither the moderate opposition nor incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Compared with the two moderate challengers, Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, Rezaei has little chance to win against Ahmadinejad, but his presence is seen as likely to split the conservative votes and harm the president.

Rezaei - one of the four presidential candidates approved Wednesday by the Guardian Council, Iran's constitutional watchdog - has vowed to continue the ideological path of Ahmadinejad but follow less extremist foreign policies and improve the economy, which is the president's Achilles heel after he failed to realize the reforms he had promised four years ago.

Rezaei was born in 1954 in Masjed Soleyman in south-western Iran. After the 1979 revolution and with the start of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, he acted as a commander of the Revolutionary Guards and became a war veteran.

In 1997, he changed careers to politics and went into the Expediency Council, a mediating body in legislative disputes in which he is the secretary of council head and former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani

Rezaei is backed by conservative circles that used to be on Ahmadinejad's side but gradually distanced themselves from the president over differences on how to run the country's political and economic affairs.

Rezaei, however, has criminal charges hanging over his head. He was accused by Argentina in 2006 of being involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires, and an international arrest warrant has been issued against him in the case. Rezaei himself has denied the charges. DPA