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.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS