Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (L), head of Iran's Assembly of Experts, gives the opening speech during the assembly's biannual meeting in Tehran September 14, 2010. 
  
 DUBAI | 
  
 DUBAI (Reuters) - After the huge protests that followed the 2009 election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have hoped June polls would quietly install a loyal conservative president, but the surprise candidacies of two major independents may scupper that. 
  
 Both Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, the nationalist protégé of rabble-rousing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and Iran's best known political grandee, are seen as a threat to the leader's authority. 
  
 Khamenei personally intervened to block Mashaie becoming vice-president in 2009 - such was his disapproval of a man conservatives accuse of leading a "deviant current" within Islam that seeks to undermine the power of Muslim clerics. 
  
 Meanwhile, the supreme leader's rivalry with Rafsanjani, a seasoned political operator, goes back decades. 
  
 Little can be predicted at this stage but if Mashaie makes it through the vetting process, the election on June 14 could turn into a three-horse race between him, Rafsanjani and one of several "Principlist" candidates - those who are fiercely loyal to Khamenei and the principles of the Islamic Republic. 
  
 Even if they fail to win, big-name alternative candidates could attract greater public interest in the election, making Khamenei's plan to see an obedient conservative take office a great deal more difficult, despite his ultimate power and the Revolutionary Guards who back him. 
  
 Struggling with sanctions over its disputed nuclear program and embroiled in civil war in Syria, one of its few and closest allies, Iran's leadership must be keen to show the world it has a strong, harmonious, fully functioning political system. 
  
 Instead, the race may produce drama and perhaps the unexpected. 
  
 The contest not only reprises Rafsanjani's fight with Ahmadinejad's camp, which beat him to the presidency in 2005, but also brings into focus his troubled relationship with Khamenei, which disintegrated over his support for the defeated reformist opposition in 2009. 
  
 "Rafsanjani poses a challenge. He has said he wants to save the Islamic Republic by changing the hardline direction the country has taken in the past few years," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran analyst at the University of Hawaii. 
  
 "Principlists who have not been able to come up with a candidate that brings together all their competing wings will have to scramble in search of some sort of unity," she said. 
  
 PRAGMATIC POLICIES 
  
 As president between 1989 and 1997, Rafsanjani clashed with Khamenei and hardliners over his pragmatic plans to mend relations with regional states and liberalize Iran's economy. 
  
 But it was support for the reformist "Green Movement" protests against Ahmadinejad's disputed 2009 election win that cast him out in the cold. 
  
 Last week, Rafsanjani said he would not enter the fray without Khamenei's consent. But analysts say a last-minute agreement with the supreme leader may not have been the ringing endorsement the former president was looking for. "Khamenei can see this as a personal challenge or a means to enhance the legitimacy of the system as a whole," said Farhi. 
  
 Khamenei may also be unable to rein in conservatives and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which wields both political and economic influence, from going on the attack. Rafsanjani is in some ways an easy target. 
  
 "Rafsanjani's wealth and business dealings present a huge vulnerability," said Shaul Bakhash, a politics professor at George Mason University in Virginia. 
  
 "Since Khamenei can't really control them, the conservative establishment, its clerical associates and the Revolutionary Guards are certain to mount a massive campaign against him." 
  
 A "DEVIANT" CAMP 
  
 The line-up also breathes new life into a seething squabble between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly challenged the authority of the supreme leader and only narrowly avoided being forced from office. 
  
 Tied to Ahmadinejad by the marriage of his daughter to the president's son, Mashaie is viewed with intense distrust and dislike by those unswervingly loyal to Khamenei. 
  
 Given the leader's own evident distaste for Mashaie, the fact that he even registered as a candidate amounts to a direct challenge to the authority of Khamenei. 
  
 Mashaie has inserted himself into religious debates and emphasized Iranian nationalism in his speeches - behavior that has outraged traditionalists. 
  
 But the Guardian Council, a conservative body of clerics and jurists that vets candidates, looks unlikely to approve Mashaie, analysts said, leaving Ahmadinejad and his allies with few options left to maintain influence and perhaps even their liberty once the current president's term ends. 
  
 "The cards are usually stacked against those who dare to challenge the Guardian Council's decision," said analyst Yasmin Alem, an expert on Iran's electoral system. "There's no reason to believe that this time will be any different." 
  
 But Ahmadinejad has shown himself capable in the past year of striking out at his political enemies, a prospect that could prove highly damaging to the Islamic Republic and its leader. 
  
 Ahmadinejad has said he has a wealth of potentially damaging information on a number of establishment figures. 
  
 "The question is whether Ahmadinejad will fulfill his threat to release all sorts of tapes of secret conversations and corruption. Releasing this will be something of a double-edged sword," said Ali Ansari of St Andrew's University in Scotland. 
  
 LOYAL LIEUTENANTS 
  
 Meanwhile, the Principlist coalition has lost its early momentum. 
  
 Two months ago the alliance - comprising charismatic Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a former parliamentary speaker and adviser to Khamenei - was the most definite player in the contest. 
  
 The group now looks set to back Saeed Jalili, a hardline conservative war veteran who is seen as close to Khamenei and has led rounds of nuclear talks with world powers since 2007. 
  
 That in itself poses another problem for Khamenei, should he give his backing to Jalili, who lacks executive experience, said Farhi of the University of Hawaii. 
  
 "He (Khamenei) will again be accused of allowing inexperienced folks to take the executive helm of the country and economy in times of serious economic crisis," she said. 
  
 (Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Jon Hemming) ||||| Story highlights President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is term-limited and can't run again 
  
 His top aide is one of the candidates 
  
 Ex-president and Ahmadinejad critic Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani also registered to run 
  
 The Guardian Council vets candidates and decides who can run 
  
 Hundreds of candidates are vying to become Iran's next president, with hopefuls ranging from friends to foes of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
  
 A total of 686 candidates have registered for the June election, Iran's state-run Press TV reported. 
  
 Ahmadinejad is term-limited and cannot run for a third straight term. 
  
 But other big names are in the mix, including Ahmadinejad's top aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei and former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. 
  
 Ahmadinejad has been grooming Mashaei to take over for years, and the two are like-minded in their nationalism and shared disdain for the clerical establishment, according to Geneive Abdo, a fellow at the Stimson Center's Middle East Program and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. 
  
 But the Guardian Council, which is controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vets candidates and decides who is allowed to run for president, Abdo said. She said the council is not expected to allow anyone from the so-called "deviant faction" of Ahmadinejad's supporters to run. 
  
 Just Watched Clerics angry Ahmadinejad hugged woman replay More Videos ... Clerics angry Ahmadinejad hugged woman 01:35 PLAY VIDEO 
  
 Just Watched Ahmadinejad on the West bluffing replay More Videos ... Ahmadinejad on the West bluffing 01:25 PLAY VIDEO 
  
 Rafsanjani, on the other hand, has long been a staunch critic and bitter political rival of Ahmadinejad's. He served two terms as president from 1989 to 1997. 
  
 Weeks after the 2009 elections, Rafsanjani condemned the regime's violent crackdown against the opposition movement and spoke out for the people's right to peacefully protest. 
  
 He later toned down the attacks and made statements of apparent support of the regime and the supreme leader, Khamenei. |||||
Output:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's time is nearly up and nearly 700 candidates are vying to replace him as president of Iran, CNN reports. Iranian authorities say 686 hopefuls have registered for the election next month—but all the candidates need to be vetted by the Guardian Council controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has feuded with Ahmadinejad for years and may reject the candidacy of his deputy, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie. If Mashaie—whose aides were arrested for summoning genies amid the power struggle with Khamenei—makes it through the vetting process, he is expected be a frontrunner. Another top-tier candidate is former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a longtime Khamenei rival who supported the opposition Green movement after 2009's disputed election and entered the race just minutes before the deadline, Reuters reports. Saeed Jalili, Iran's senior nuclear negotiator and a hardline conservative, is seen as the leading candidate among Khamenei loyalists.