"Whatever was former President Ahmadinejad's motivation in defying the supreme leader's advice, it will be a detrimental blow to his political career", Khosrou Dehghan, an analyst close to Iran's reformist camp, posted on Telegram, a social media app.
"His advice does not prevent me from running", Ahmadinejad said of Khamenei Wednesday. His pro-reform rivals said that vote was rigged. He had previously said he would not run, after being so advised by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He vowed to serve the Iranians, and try hard for the establishment of "justice and freedom" if he was re-elected as President.
The final list of the candidates will be approved by the influential Guardian Council, a twelve-member body consisting of six clerics and six Islamic lawyers, and will contain no more than 10 entrants.
Ahmadinejad's registration for Iran presidential elections surprised political experts of the Islamic Republic.
Prior to his registration, Ahmadinejad had shifted over the issue puzzlingly within months. At a press conference shortly after registering, Ahmadinejad called Khamenei's comments "just advice", and described his move as helping Baghaei.
Internationally, this move is seen as mutiny against Khamenei. Even many hard-liners believe the council will disqualify Ahmadinejad and Baghaei, who was briefly jailed on corruption charges.
Ahmadinejad had said last week that he was not planning to run and would support Baghaei. However, his popularity in Iran remains in question.
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Mr Rouhani and his allies have criticisedMr Ahmadinejad's free-spending policies for fuelling inflation and accuse him of wasting Iran's oil revenues.
President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes a public speech at Columbia University in New York City.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also saw through the ruse from the start, pointing to Rouhani's statement a decade earlier that he'd deceived the West to advance Iran's nuclear program.
May's election is widely expected to be won by current moderate President Hassan Rouhani, best known outside the country for his negotiation of a nuclear deal with world powers.
The number of eligible voters in the upcoming election is estimated to be around 1.5 million higher than the 50.5 million in the previous round four years ago. Many Iranians have grown impatient with the slow rate of improvement in their economic fortunes since the lifting of sanctions a year ago.
News of Ahmadinejad's filing follows reports in June 2016 that the former Iranian president was mulling the possibility of running in Iran's 2017 presidential elections. Ahmadinejad was accompanying Baghaei, who also went through the registration process.
Ebrahim Raisi, a judge who now heads the powerful Imam Reza charitable foundation in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Mashhad, topped the shortlist.
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