A reformist candidate critical of Iran’s law requiring women to wear headscarves will compete next week against a hard-line conservative in a runoff election for the country’s presidency, state media said. on Saturday, following a special vote after the former leader was killed last month in a helicopter crash.
The second round of voting, pitting reformist Masoud Pezeshkian against Saeed Jalili, an ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator, will take place on July 5. The runoff is partly the result of low voter turnout and a tight field of four candidate, three of whom fought for the conservative vote. Iranian law requires a winner to receive more than 50 percent of all votes.
Participating in another round of voting will strain the strength of an apathetic electorate, disaffected by their leaders at a time of international and domestic turmoil. Iran’s economy is floundering under the weight of Western sanctions, its citizens’ freedoms are increasingly curtailed and its foreign policy is increasingly shaped by hardline leaders.
The campaign, which initially included six candidates – five conservatives and one reformist – was notable for how candidly those issues were discussed and a public willingness to attack the status quo. In speeches, televised debates and round-table discussions, candidates criticized government policies and derided rosy official assessments of Iran’s economic prospects as dangerous delusions.
Public dissatisfaction with the ability of any new president to bring about change is reflected in the low turnout for the election: According to Iran’s state news agency, only 40 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. .
Naa official results announced on Saturday, led by Dr. Pezeshkian with 10.4 million votes (42.4 percent), followed by Mr. Jalili with 9.4 million (38.6 percent). The third conservative candidate, Gen. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the current speaker of Parliament and former mayor of Tehran, is a distant third at 3.3 million (13.8 percent).
The low total will be a blow to the country’s ruling clerics, who have made voter participation a marker of the vote’s perceived legitimacy and hope to achieve a 50 percent turnout.
In a neighborhood in northern Tehran on Saturday, a group of men discussed the election results, and the prospects for the runoff, over coffee. One of them, Farzad Jafari, 36, predicted a higher turnout in the next vote. He and others also debated whether Mr. Jalili would be able to unify the conservative vote in a head-to-head contest, or whether more voters would emerge to support the reformist option offered by Dr. Pezeshkian.
“We don’t see any change because all these people are allowed to run, it means they are under the government,” Mr. Jafari said. “It might not make a big difference,” he added of a potential breakthrough by Dr. Pezeshkian, “but the only thing we can do is hope.”
Aside from domestic pressures, Iran’s leaders also face a particularly volatile time in the region: Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, an Iranian-backed militant group, and the escalation of clash between Israel and Hezbollah pitting two of Iran’s proxy forces against Israel, it. sworn enemy
Despite the critical campaign rhetoric, the candidates are all members of the Iranian political establishment, approved to run by a committee of Islamic clerics and jurists. All but one, Dr. Pezeshkian, are considered conservatives close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mr. Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, is likely the candidate closest to Mr. Khamenei. He leads the ultra-right-wing Paydari party and represents the country’s most rigid ideological views when it comes to domestic and foreign policy. Mr. Jalili said he believed Iran did not need to negotiate with the United States for economic success.
Dr. Pezeshkian is a cardiac surgeon and veteran of the Iran-Iraq war who served in Parliament and as Iran’s health minister. After his wife and son died in a car accident, he raised the other children as a single father and never remarried. This and his identity as an Azeri, one of Iran’s ethnic minorities, endeared him to many voters.
Dr. Pezeshkian was endorsed by former President Mohammad Khatami, and he expressed openness to nuclear negotiations with the West, framing the debate as an economic issue. But since the conservative vote is no longer split among multiple candidates, his path to the presidency could be more complicated in a head-to-head runoff.
By stacking the deck to increase a conservative’s chances of winning, Mr. Khamenei signaled his desire for a second leader whose vision mirrors his own and who will continue the agenda of Ebrahim Raisi, the hard-line president killed last month in a helicopter crash near the Azerbaijan border.
The low voter turnout reflects widespread apathy among Iranians, who also voted in record low numbers in this year’s parliamentary elections. That frustration has been exacerbated by the government’s violent crackdown on protesters demanding change and its inadequate response to the toll that decades of sanctions have taken on the country’s economy, eroding its purchasing power. Iranians.
The most recent anti-government demonstrations – and a subsequent crackdown – were prompted in large part by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being jailed for incorrectly wearing her mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
In a nod to the unpopularity of the hijab law, all candidates sought to distance themselves from the methods the country’s morality policy uses to enforce it, which include violence, arrests and fines.
Although the headscarf mandate has been a campaign issue, it is unlikely that the law will be repealed, and it is doubtful that the new president could soften its implementation. The protests, largely organized by women, sparked a bloody crackdown ordered by Mr. Khamenei, and any new president, analysts say, is expected to implement his policies.
That’s mainly because Iran is a theocracy with a parallel system of government where elected bodies are overseen by appointed councils made up of Islamic clerics and jurists. The main policies of the state in nuclear, military and foreign affairs are decided by the country’s supreme leader, Mr. Khamenei.
The role of the president focuses on domestic policy and economic affairs, but it is still an influential position. Past presidents have played an active role in conducting foreign policy, including a 2015 deal with the United States in which Iran agreed to halt its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
That deal was scrapped in 2018 by the Trump administration, and Iran has returned to enriching uranium. Beyond tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, the United States and Iran have in the past year moved closer to a direct confrontation as they compete for influence across the Middle East.
In Gaza, the war between Israel, a US ally, and Hamas has drawn the United States, Iran and Iran’s foreign proxies into closer conflict. Iran sees its use of those groups as a means of expanding its power, but many citizens, especially in the cities, see little value in their leaders’ strategy and believe the economy can only recover through of sustainable diplomacy.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
