Iranian presidential candidates are wrapping up their final days of campaigning as the May 19 vote draws near. The economy has taken center stage this year, in contrast to the 2013 election, when the presidential debates focused on foreign policy and nuclear negotiations.

Indeed, none of the three televised debates in recent weeks were devoted to foreign policy. Instead, the candidates discussed foreign policy alongside domestic policy and cultural issues in the second debate, which aired May 5 on Iranian state television. The candidates have also seemed uninterested in foreign policy matters in their broader campaigning. Apart from incumbent Hassan Rouhani, whose four-year report card is a clear indication of his foreign policy performance, his key rival Ebrahim Raisi, the custodian of the holy shrine of the eighth Shiite Imam, appears lost in this field.

During the 2013 presidential election, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — then a presidential candidate and now a Raisi ally — made a campaign appearance on Iranian state TV and said: “What part of the law permits me to say what I think in terms of foreign policy? Foreign policy is something the establishment decides on. Of course, the president also has a key and influential role in it, but the law does not give the president the whole share [and say] in foreign policy. No one can say that they will change [the country’s] foreign policy in [the span of] four years. Anyone who says they will make massive changes if elected is making false promises and voicing a [mere] slogan.”

However, this time around, Ghalibaf, who stepped aside in favor of Raisi on May 15, had a different approach toward foreign policy and entered the election with a revised view. In the May 5 presidential debate, he said, “In diplomacy, we need to consider both diplomacy of power and negotiation as well as general and economic diplomacy. If today the government truly says that it has been successful in foreign policy, it is because we were first successful in power diplomacy. Today we need to pursue economic diplomacy. My plan is to have a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and [a Ministry of] International Trade whose priority will be economic diplomacy [focused] on [our] neighbors and regional countries. There is a 400-million [-strong] market in the region that we need to pay attention to. We have to change our approach.” Ghalibaf, however, did not elaborate further. Indeed, his campaign focused on the economy and tackling unemployment.