Dubai, United Arab Emirates — The first results in Iran’s presidential elections On Saturday he put the conservative Saeed Jalili slightly ahead, closely followed by the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian.
Early results, reported on Iranian state television, initially did not put Jalili in a position to outright win Friday’s election, which could set the stage for a runoff election to replace the late hardline president Ebrahim Raisi.
Nor has it yet offered any turnout figures for the electoral race, a crucial component in determining whether the Iranian electorate supports its Shiite theocracy after years of economic turmoil and massive protests.
With more than 10 million votes counted, Jaili obtained 4.26 million votes, followed by Pezeshkian with 4.24 million. Another candidate, hardline parliament speaker Mohmmad Bagher Qalibaf, won about 1.38 million votes. Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi received more than 80,000 votes.
Voters had to choose between three hardline candidates and the little-known reformist Pezeshkian, cardiac surgeon. As has been the case since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Women and those who ask for radical change. They have been banned from running, while the vote itself will not be monitored by internationally recognized observers.
The vote came at a time when rising tensions have gripped the Middle East over the War between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
In April, Iran launched its first direct attack against Israel on the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region, such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, are involved in the fighting and have intensified their attacks.
Meanwhile, Iran continues Enrich uranium to near weapons-grade levels. and maintains an arsenal large enough to build, if it so chooses, several nuclear weapons.
There have been calls for a boycott, including from imprisoned people Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Mir Hossein Mousavi, one of the leaders of the 2009 Green Movement protests who remains under house arrest, also refused to vote with his wife, his daughter said.
There has also been criticism that Pezeshkian represents simply another government-approved candidate. A woman in a documentary about Pezeshkian broadcast on state television said her generation was “moving towards the same level” of animosity with the government that Pezeshkian’s generation had in the 1979 revolution.
Iranian law requires the winner to obtain more than 50% of all votes cast. If that doesn’t happen, the race’s top two candidates will advance to a runoff a week later. There has only been one second round in Iran’s history: in 2005, when hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Raisi, 63 years old He died in the helicopter crash on May 19. who also killed the country’s foreign minister and other people. He was considered a protégé of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a potential successor. Still, many knew him for his participation in the mass executions that Iran carried out in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdown on dissent that followed protests over Amini’s death. a young woman detained by the police for the allegedly inappropriate use of the mandatory veil or hijab.
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This story has been corrected to say that 10 million was the total number of votes initially counted.
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