Reformist candidate Massoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s presidential runoff election on Saturday, defeating hardline candidate Saeed Jalili on a pledge to work with the West and ease enforcement of the country’s compulsory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests that have squeezed the country.
Pezeshkian campaigned on the issue, promising no radical changes to Iran’s Shiite theocracy, and has long viewed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all state affairs. But Tehran remains dominated by hardliners, Israel and Hamas are at war in the Gaza Strip, and Pezeshkian’s modest goals will be challenged by Western fears that Iran could be enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels and building a stockpile large enough to build multiple nuclear weapons if it so chose.
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Pezeshkian won Friday’s election with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million, according to official results. Iran’s Interior Ministry said 30 million people voted in the election, held without internationally recognized observers, for a turnout of 49.6 percent — higher than the record low of the first round on June 28 but lower than other presidential elections.
Reformist candidate in the Iranian presidential election, Massoud Pezeshkian (center), escorted by former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif (left), finishes casting his vote at a polling station in Shahr-e-Quds, near Tehran, Iran, on Friday. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Supporters of Mr. Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, took to the streets of Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate his widening lead over Mr. Jalili, a hardline former nuclear negotiator. Mr. Pezeshkian later visited the mausoleum of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and addressed reporters at the chaotic event.
“In this election, I made no false promises, I didn’t lie,” Pezeshkian said. “Years after the revolution, we stood on the platform, we made promises, but we didn’t deliver. This is the biggest problem we have.”
Pezeshkian’s victory reflects the delicate situation Iran remains in, with rising tensions in the Middle East and looming U.S. presidential elections jeopardizing any chance of detente between Tehran and Washington. Pezeshkian’s victory was not a landslide victory over Jalili, and he will have to navigate Iran’s domestic politics carefully, given that he has never previously held a sensitive, high-level security position.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other government officials predicted turnout would increase as voting began, and state television showed footage of sparse lines at polling stations. But online videos reported that some polling stations were empty, and a survey of dozens of them in Tehran showed light traffic and heavy security on the streets.
Authorities counted 607,575 invalid votes, often a sign of protest by people who felt obliged to vote but rejected both candidates.
Khamenei praised the turnout on Saturday, despite claiming the boycott was “orchestrated by the enemies of the Iranian people to foment hopelessness and helplessness.”
Iranians queue to cast their ballots at polling stations in Tehran as the country holds a presidential election to choose a successor to Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters)
“I encourage President-elect Dr. Pezechkian to trust in a gracious God and set his vision on high and bright horizons,” Khamenei added.
Voters expressed cautious optimism.
“I don’t expect anything from him. I’m happy that this vote has put a stop to the hardliners,” said Fatemeh Babaei, a banker who voted for Pezeshkian. “I hope he can bring back a government where all the people feel there is a tomorrow.”
Taher Hariri, a Kurdish-Iranian man who runs a small tailoring shop in Tehran, offered another reason for hope as he handed out candy to passersby.
“In the end, someone from my hometown and from western Iran came to power,” Hariri said. “I hope he will improve the economy for small and medium-sized businesses.”
Pezeshkian, who speaks Azerbaijani, Persian and Kurdish, campaigned on reaching out to Iran’s many ethnic groups. He will be the first president from Iran’s western region in decades, and people there hope that the region’s ethnic and religious diversity will benefit Iran as they see people in the west as more tolerant.
The election comes amid rising tensions in the region: In April, Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while Iran-armed militias such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels have joined the fighting and intensified attacks.
While Khamenei will retain final say on national issues, Pezechkian could tilt the country’s foreign policy towards either confrontation or cooperation with the West.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who achieved detente with Iran, congratulated Mr. Pezeshkian, stressing his “eagerness to develop and deepen the ties that bind our two countries and peoples.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has relied on Iranian drones in his war against Ukraine, similarly congratulated Mr. Pezeshkian.
In response to questions from The Associated Press, the State Department said Iran’s elections were “neither free nor fair” and noted that “a significant number of Iranians chose not to participate in the election at all.”
“We do not expect this election to fundamentally change Iran’s direction or lead it to better respect the human rights of its people,” the State Department added. “As the candidates themselves have stated, Iranian policy is determined by the supreme leader.”
But it said the country would pursue diplomacy “when it serves U.S. interests.”
The candidates repeatedly mentioned what would happen if former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, wins the November election. Iran has been in indirect talks with President Joe Biden’s administration but there has been no clear move to again restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for economic sanctions relief.
Pezeshkian’s victory helped the Iranian rial strengthen against the U.S. dollar on Saturday, dropping to 603,000 against the U.S. dollar from 615,000 on Thursday. The rial was worth 32,000 at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal.
During his campaign, Pezeshkian aligned himself with reformers and relative moderates in Iran’s theocracy, but he also praised Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, at one point appearing in parliament wearing an IRGC uniform. He has repeatedly criticized the United States, praising the IRGC’s downing of a U.S. drone in 2019, saying it “dealt a hard punch to the Americans and proved that our country will not bow down.”
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The late President Ebrahim Raisi, whose death in a helicopter crash in May triggered early elections, was a protégé of Khamenei and was seen as a possible successor to the supreme leader.
Still, he is known to many for his role in Iran’s 1988 mass executions and in the bloody crackdown on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was detained by police for allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
