Masoud Pezeshkian, one of two candidates to qualify for the second round of Iran’s presidential election, arrived at a polling station in Tehran on Friday to cast his vote.
SAMAN/Middle East Pictures/AFPGetty Images
hide title
Switch title
SAMAN/Middle East Pictures/AFPGetty Images
ISTANBUL — Iranian voters handed reformist Masoud Pezeshkian a decisive victory in a runoff to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who won the Killed in a helicopter crash in May.
Iran’s president-elect Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and lawmaker, is a relatively unknown candidate who ran on a moderate reformist platform. But more voters turned out than in the first round, and he polled more than 2.8 million votes, surpassing hardline conservative Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear activist with strong anti-Western views. negotiator.
Iranian officials said about 30 million people took part in Friday’s vote, about 49.6% of eligible voters, which is considered low for a presidential election. Official reports said Pezeshkian received 16.3 million votes, while Jalili received 13.5 million.
Pezeshkian made only modest proposals on the campaign trail and showed no inclination to push for major changes in the government, which has left all important state affairs to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Pezeshkian will also face a government still largely controlled by hardliners at a time when relations with the West are strained over issues such as the Gaza war.
Get today’s results
The emergency election was held after the late president Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19.
Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets candidates, has whittled down a long list of hopefuls to just six: five hardline conservatives and one reformist. But two candidates dropped out before the first vote.
On June 28, the first round of the presidential election was held among the four remaining candidates: Pezeshkian, Speaker of Parliament, former Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and former Iranian Interior Ministry and Mustafa Pourmohammadi, a Shiite cleric serving in the Intelligence Ministry.
But no candidate received a majority of the votes, with Pezeshkian leading with 10.4 million votes and Jalili in second place with 9.4 million votes. They advance to Friday’s runoff.
The runoff was the second presidential runoff in the country’s history. The first occurred in 2005, when hardline Ahmadinejad defeated former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
