A reformist candidate critical of many of Iran’s government policies, including a mandatory headscarf law, will run against a hardline conservative in the country’s presidential runoff next week, the interior ministry announced on Saturday. The runoff follows a special vote held after the death of former leader Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.
The second round of voting will take place on July 5, pitting reformist Masoud Pezeshkian against ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Low turnout and three major candidates. Iranian law requires the winner to receive more than 50% of all votes cast.
A majority of Iranians (60%) did not vote on Friday, according to Interior Ministry data, which analysts and candidate aides said was largely a protest against the government’s disregard for their demands for meaningful change.
Siamak Ghassemi, a well-known Iranian economist, said on social media that voters sent a clear message. “This is one of the most fiercely contested presidential elections, with reformists and conservatives pulling out all the stops, and 60% of Iranians chose the reformists and conservatives.”
Iran faces multiple challenges ranging from domestic unrest to international tensions. China’s economy is in trouble under tough Western sanctions, civil liberties are increasingly restricted, and its foreign policy is largely set by hardline leaders.
The campaign initially included six candidates – five conservatives and one reformist – and what was notable was how frankly the issues were discussed and the public’s willingness to attack the status quo. In speeches, televised debates and roundtable discussions, candidates criticized government policies and derided optimistic official assessments of Iran’s economic prospects as harmful illusions.
Public dissatisfaction with any new president’s ability to bring about change is reflected in meager turnout, an all-time low for a presidential election and even lower than the 41% reported in parliamentary elections earlier this year. The lower vote total will be a blow to the country’s ruling clergy, who see voter participation as a sign of the vote’s legitimacy and want a 50% turnout.
In official results released on Saturday, Dr Pezeshkian led with 10.4 million votes (42.4%), followed by Mr Jalili with 9.4 million votes (38.6%). The third conservative candidate, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the current speaker of parliament and former mayor of Tehran, is far ahead in third place with 3.3 million people (13.8%).
It’s unclear whether a runoff between two candidates representing different ends of the political spectrum will inspire more voters to come forward, as large numbers of Iranians see the candidates as part of a system they want to reject wholesale.
“This will be a very difficult and challenging week,” Mohammad Mobin, a Tehran-based analyst involved in Dr. Pezeshkian’s campaign, said on Saturday. “In order to get voters out, we have to act strategically.” “People think there’s no difference between us and them,” he added of conservatives.
Simple math seems to suggest that if Mr Jalili gets Mr Ghalibaf’s vote, his approval rating will be over 50%. But in earlier polls, many who voted for Ghalibaf said they would not support Jalili. Dr. Pezeshkian is likely to gain votes from those worried about Jalili’s presidency.
In a neighborhood in northern Tehran, a group of men discussed the election results and prospects for a runoff over coffee on Saturday. One of them, 36-year-old Farzad Jafari, predicted a higher turnout at the next poll. He and others also discussed whether Jalili could unite conservative votes in a head-to-head contest, or whether more voters would support the reformist option presented by Dr. Pezeshkian.
Mr. Jaafari said he believed many people like him who were absent from Friday’s vote were likely to drop out of the runoff. “I don’t want to vote at all because they are excluding those who should be running, who are mostly reformers,” he said. “But more people will vote in the next round and those who voted blank or did not vote will come.”
In addition to domestic pressure, Iran’s leaders face a particularly tumultuous period in the region: Israel’s war in Gaza against the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas, and an escalation of small-scale conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah that have led to two A puppet force launched a confrontation with Israel.
Despite critical rhetoric during the campaign, the candidates are members of Iran’s political establishment and have been approved to run by the Islamic Council of Clerics and Jurists. All except Dr. Pezeshkian are considered conservatives close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Former nuclear negotiator Jalili may be the closest candidate to Khamenei. He leads the far-right Pedari party, which represents the country’s strongest ideological views on domestic and foreign policy. Jalili said he did not believe Iran needed to negotiate with the United States to achieve economic success.
Dr. Pezeshkian is a cardiac surgeon and veteran of the Iran-Iraq war who has served in parliament and as Iran’s health minister. After his wife died in a car accident, he raised his other children as a single father and never remarried. This identity, along with his status as an Azerbaijani, one of Iran’s ethnic minorities, endeared him to many voters.
Dr Pezeshkian is backed by former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who has expressed a willingness to engage in nuclear talks with the West, framing the debate as an economic issue with the ultimate aim of evading sanctions. Impose economic sanctions on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
After a bitter public row, Mr Ghalibaf issued a statement on Saturday in support of Mr Jalili and asked his constituents to do the same to ensure a victory for the conservative camp.
By planning to increase the conservatives’ chances of victory, Khamenei expressed his desire to find a second-in-command who shares his views and continues Lacey’s hard line.
The low turnout reflected widespread apathy among Iranians, exacerbated by the government’s violent crackdown on protesters demanding change and an ineffective response to the toll decades of sanctions have taken on the country’s economy, eroding their purchasing power. their frustration.
The recent anti-government demonstrations and subsequent crackdown were largely triggered by the death in 2022 of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being detained for failing to properly wear the mandatory headscarf or headscarf.
In acknowledgment of the hijab law’s unpopularity, candidates have sought to distance themselves from the country’s moral policy approach to enforcing the law, which has included violence, arrests and fines.
Although the new president is likely to soften enforcement of the headscarf mandate, as Mr Khatami and moderate President Hassan Rouhani did during their terms. The law is unlikely to be repealed.
This is largely because Iran is a theocratic state with a parallel system of governance, with elected institutions overseen by appointed committees composed of Islamic clerics and jurists. The country’s nuclear, military, foreign and other major policies are all decided by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The role of the president focuses primarily on domestic policy and economic matters, but is still an influential position. Rouhani, for example, played an active role in the 2015 deal with Western powers in which Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.
The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, and Iran has since resumed enriching uranium. In addition to tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, the United States and Iran have moved closer to direct confrontation over the past year as they compete for influence across the Middle East.
In Gaza, the war between U.S. allies Israel and Hamas has drawn the United States, Iran and Iran’s foreign proxies into closer conflict. Iran sees using these groups as a way to expand its power, but many citizens, especially in cities, see little value in their leaders’ strategies and believe the economy can only recover through continued diplomacy and the lifting of sanctions. “We are in a third world country and we are sitting on so much wealth,” coffee shop owner Vahid Arafati, 38, said after Friday’s vote. “Arab countries, for example, are moving from They benefit from their wealth, but through our politics we gain nothing.”
When asked why he voted if he didn’t expect much change, he said: “Maybe I have a little hope. After a pause, he added: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little hope?”
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
