The sole reformist in Iran’s presidential election, Masoud Pezeshkian, would face the ultraconservative Saeed Jalili in a runoff, authorities said yesterday, following a vote marred by historically low turnout.
Pezeshkian, 69, secured 42.4 percent of the vote, while Jalili, a 58-year-old former nuclear negotiator, finished second with 38.6 percent, Iranian Election Office spokesman Mohsen Eslami said.
Islamic Consultative Assembly Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was next with 13.8 percent of the vote, while the only other candidate, conservative cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi, received less than 1 percent.
Photo: Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency via Reuters
“None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes,” Eslami said, adding that those who finished first and second would face each other in a runoff on Friday next week.
Only slightly more than 40 percent of the 61 million electorate took part in Friday’s first round — a record low turnout for the Islamic republic.
The Election Office said that more than 1 million ballots were spoiled.
Photo: AFP
Out of Iran’s 13 previous presidential elections since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, only one has led to a runoff, which was in 2005.
The poll had been scheduled to take place next year, but was brought forward by the death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.
The Guardian Council, which vets candidates, had originally approved six contenders, but a day before the election, two of them — Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani and Iranian Vice President Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi — dropped out.
Both candidates, after the release of the final results, asked their supporters to vote for Jalili in the runoff.
Ghalibaf followed suit later, asking “all revolutionary forces and supporters” to get behind Jalili’s bid for the presidency.
Friday’s vote took place amid heightened regional tensions over the Gaza war, a dispute with the West over Iran’s nuclear program and domestic discontent over the state of Iran’s sanctions-hit economy.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had urged people to vote, while opposition groups, especially in the diaspora, called for a boycott, questioning the credibility of elections.
Pezeshkian is a heart surgeon who has represented the northern city of Tabriz in parliament since 2008.
He served as health minister under Iran’s previous reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who held office from 1997 to 2005 and has endorsed Pezeshkian’s bid in the current elections.
Pezeshkian criticized Raisi’s government for a lack of transparency during nationwide protests triggered by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.
The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd had been arrested for allegedly contravening the country’s strict dress code for women.
In recent campaigning, Pezeshkian called for “constructive relations” with Washington and European countries to “get Iran out of its isolation.”
Jalili, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, has maintained his uncompromising anti-West stance.
The 58-year-old has held several senior positions in the Islamic republic, including in Khamenei’s office in the early 2000s.
He is currently one of Khamenei’s representatives in the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s highest security body.
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