Initial Results Put Moderate Pezeshkian Ahead Of Hard-Liner Jalili In Iran's Presidential Polls: Report

Pezeshkian has campaigned on relaxing hijab enforcement and reaching out to the West, though he too for decades has supported Khamenei and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard

Early trends in Iran's presidential runoff election showed that reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian was narrowly ahead of hard-liner Saeed Jalili, according to state television. Iran held a runoff presidential election on Friday that pitted a hard-liner former nuclear negotiator Jalili against a reformist lawmaker Pezeshkian. 

Pezeshkian had 6,939,955 votes trailed by Jalili with 6,359,099, with 13,550,280 votes counted in 29,175 polling stations, Associated Press reported quoting election spokesman Mohsen Eslami. There are some 60,000 polling stations and more than 61 million eligible voters.

As per the report, both men had struggled to convince a skeptical public to cast ballots in the first round of voting that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

After the first round on June 28, Khamenei has insisted the low turnout did not represent a referendum on Iran’s Shiite theocracy. However, many remain disillusioned as Iran has been beset by years under crushing economic sanctions, bloody security force crackdowns on mass protests and tensions with the West over Tehran’s advancing nuclear.

Polls closed after midnight, after voting was extended as had become tradition in Iran.

About Candidates

As per the AP report, Jalili has had a recalcitrant reputation among Western diplomats during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, something that is paired with concern at home over his hard-line views on Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab. 

Heart surgeon Pezeshkian, on the other hand, has campaigned on relaxing hijab enforcement and reaching out to the West, though he too for decades has supported Khamenei and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

Pezeshkian’s supporters have warned voters that Jalili will bring a “Taliban”-style government into Tehran, while Jalili has accused Pezeshkian of running a campaign of fear-mongering.

Both contenders voted Friday in southern Tehran, home to many poor neighborhoods. 

Notably, Pezeshkian came out on top in the first round of voting on June 28 as well. However, Jalili has been trying to secure the votes of people who supported hard-line parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who came in third and later endorsed the former negotiator.

Both Pezeshkian and Jalili hope to replace the 63-year-old late President Ebrahim Raisi died in a May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and several other officials.