Iran’s Interior Ministry said on Saturday that a reformist candidate critical of many of Iran’s government policies, including the mandatory headscarf law, will face off against hardline conservatives in next week’s presidential runoff election. The runoff follows a special vote held last month after former leader Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash.
The second round, pitting reformist Massoud Pezeshkian against ultra-conservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, will take place on July 5. The runoff election was marred in part by low voter turnout and by the fact that there were three main candidates, two of whom competed for the conservative vote. Under Iranian law, the winner must receive at least 50 percent of the total votes.
The vast majority of Iranians – 60 percent – did not vote on Friday, according to the Interior Ministry, but analysts and candidates’ aides said this was largely an act of protest against the government ignoring their demands for meaningful change.
Prominent Iranian economist Siamak Ghasemi said on social media that voters were sending a clear message: “In one of the most fierce presidential elections, in which reformists and conservatives fought with all their might, a majority of 60 percent of Iranians are fed up with reformists and conservatives.”
Iran faces a range of challenges from domestic turmoil to international tensions: its economy is collapsing under harsh Western sanctions, its people’s freedoms are increasingly restricted and its foreign policy is being shaped largely by its hardline leadership.
The race, which initially featured six candidates — five conservatives and one reformist — was notable for its frank discussion of these issues and for its public willingness to challenge the status quo. In speeches, television debates and roundtable discussions, the candidates criticized government policies and ridiculed the government’s optimistic assessment of Iran’s economic prospects as a harmful delusion.
Public dissatisfaction with the new president’s ability to bring about change is reflected in the meager voter turnout — the lowest ever for a presidential election and even lower than the reported 41% turnout in parliamentary elections earlier this year. The low turnout will be a blow to the country’s ruling clergy, who see voter participation as an indicator of the vote’s legitimacy and had hoped to achieve a 50% turnout.
In Official Results Announcement Dr Pezechkian came out on top in Saturday’s election with 10.4 million votes (42.4%), followed by Mr Jalili with 9.4 million votes (38.6%). Current parliament speaker and former mayor of Tehran Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf came in a distant third with 3.3 million (13.8%).
It remains unclear whether a runoff election between two candidates representing opposite ends of the political spectrum will encourage more voters to turn out to vote, with many Iranians viewing the candidates as part of a system they want to reject altogether.
“This week is going to be a very difficult and challenging week,” Mohammad Mobin, a Tehran-based analyst who worked on Dr Pezeshkian’s campaign, said Saturday. “We have to be strategic in rallying voters.” “Some people think there’s no difference between us and them,” he added of conservatives.
Simple math would suggest that if Jalili could win Ghalibaf’s votes, his approval rating would exceed 50 percent. But previous polls have shown that many of those who voted for Ghalibaf also say they do not support Jalili. Pezeshkian may also win the votes of those who fear a Jalili presidency.
Over coffee on Saturday in a northern Tehran neighborhood, a group of men discussed the results and prospects for a runoff. One of them, Farzad Jafari, 36, predicted a higher turnout next time. He and the other men also discussed whether Mr. Jalili would be able to rally conservative votes in a head-to-head contest, or whether more voters would back the reformist option proposed by Dr. Pezeshkian.
Jafari said he believes many of those who, like him, did not vote on Friday could be pushed into a runoff election. “I didn’t want to vote because it eliminated people who should have been in the election, most of them reformers,” he said. “But I think in the next round, more people will vote, and those who cast blank ballots or didn’t vote will also come.”
In addition to pressures at home, Iran’s leaders face a particularly volatile period in the region, with Israel’s war in Gaza between the Iran-backed militant group Hamas and escalating skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah pitting two of Iran’s proxy forces against arch-rival Israel.
Despite their critical comments on the campaign trail, all of the candidates were members of Iran’s political establishment, whose candidacy was approved by a committee of Islamic clerics and jurists. All except Dr. Pezeshkian were considered conservatives close to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, is likely to be the closest candidate to Khamenei. He heads the far-right Paidari Party and represents Iran’s most hardline ideological views on domestic and foreign policy. Jalili has said he doesn’t think Iran needs to negotiate with the United States for economic success.
Dr. Pezeshkian is a cardiac surgeon and veteran of the Iran-Iraq War who served as a member of parliament and 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, along with his identity as an Azerbaijani, one of Iran’s ethnic minorities, endeared him to many voters.
Dr Pezeshkian is supported by the reformist former President Mohammed Khatami and is open to nuclear negotiations with the West, views the nuclear issue as an economic one, and ultimately aims to avoid nuclear war. Economic sanctions against nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
After a fierce public debate, Ghalibaf issued a statement on Saturday backing Jalili and calling on voters to do the same to ensure a conservative victory.
By manipulating the odds to improve the conservatives’ chances of victory, Khamenei signaled that he wants a lieutenant who reflects his own thinking and continues Raisi’s hard-line stance.
The low turnout reflects widespread apathy among Iranians, whose discontent has been fuelled by the government’s violent crackdown on protesters calling for change and its inadequate response to the damage that decades of sanctions have done to the country’s economy and sapped the purchasing power of Iranians.
The recent anti-government protests and subsequent crackdown were primarily sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody in 2022 after she was detained by police for improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf (hijab).
Acknowledging the unpopularity of the hijab law, all the candidates sought to distance themselves from the methods used by the country’s morality police to enforce it, including violence, arrests and fines.
The new president may ease enforcement of the headscarf requirement, as happened under Khatami and moderate President Hassan Rouhani, but the law is unlikely to be repealed.
This is primarily because Iran is a theocracy with a parallel system of government, elected institutions overseen by an appointed council of Islamic clerics and jurists, and major national nuclear, military and foreign policy decisions are made by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
While the presidency focuses on domestic policy and economic issues, it is still an influential position. For example, Rouhani played an active role in forging the 2015 deal with Western countries in which Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, after which Iran resumed enriching uranium. In addition to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and Iran are competing for influence across the Middle East and have come ever closer to direct confrontation over the past year.
In Gaza, the war between U.S. ally Israel and Hamas has drawn the U.S., Iran and Iran’s foreign proxies into an even more tense confrontation. Iran uses these groups as a means to expand its power, but many citizens, especially in cities, see little value in its leaders’ strategy and believe the economy will only recover through sustained diplomacy and sanctions relief. “We are in a Third World country, sitting on so much wealth,” said Vahid Arafati, 38, who runs a coffee shop in Tehran after Friday’s vote. “Arab countries, for example, benefit from their wealth, but with our politics we get nothing.”
Asked why he voted if he didn’t expect any big change, he replied, “Maybe there’s a little bit of hope,” then added after a short pause, “Isn’t it good to have a little bit of hope?”
Raylee Niconazar contributed reporting.
