Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian Wins Iran’s Runoff Presidential Election
Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian claimed victory in Iran’s runoff presidential election, defeating hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili by nearly 3 million votes. The election was held to replace the recently deceased President Ebrahim Raisi.
Pezeshkian campaigned on improving Iran’s economic conditions by mending ties with the West to reduce the impact of sanctions and easing the morality police’s harsh enforcement of the country’s mandatory hijab law.
Jalili received the most votes in the first round of voting last week but fell short of the 50% needed to clinch the election, leading to Friday’s runoff.
Only 49.6% of eligible voters cast a ballot in Friday’s election, with Pezeshkian receiving 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million.
While voter turnout was higher than the historically low numbers seen in the country’s legislative elections earlier this year and the first round of presidential voting, many government officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had predicted a higher turnout.
Khamenei congratulated Pezeshkian on his victory but alleged there was a wider conspiracy “orchestrated by the enemies of the Iranian nation to induce despair and a feeling of hopelessness,” causing the low turnout.
Pezeshkian, who speaks Azeri, Farsi, and Kurdish, comes from Iran’s western regions and ran a campaign focused on connecting with Iran’s ethnic minority groups, most of whom are based in the country’s west. The former heart surgeon and longtime fixture of Iranian politics is the first president from western Iran in decades.
