Iran to hold election with reformist Pezeshkian and Jalili after low turnout

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran will hold a presidential runoff pitting a little-known reformist against a hard-line former nuclear negotiator after results released Saturday showed the lowest voter turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

More than 60 percent of voters did not vote in the race in which reformist Masoud Pezeshkian bested Saeed Jalili, who ran alongside two other hardliners.

With Jalili now facing the heart surgeon alone, Pezeshkian’s campaign should woo voters to the July 5 ballot in an otherwise absentee ballot as public anger builds after years of Iran facing economic hardship and mass protests under Shiite leadership. theocracy.

“Let’s look at it as a protest in itself: a very widespread choice to reject what’s being offered — both the candidates and the system,” said Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program. “That tells us a lot about public opinion and apathy, frustration. It kind of brings it all together.”

Of the 24.5 million votes cast in Friday’s election, Pezeshkian got 10.4 million, while Jalili got 9.4 million, election spokesman Mohsen Eslami said. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf got 3.3 million, while Shia cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi had more than 206,000 votes.

Iranian law requires a winner to get more than 50% of all votes cast. If not, the top two finishers of the race advance to a round a week later. There has been only one other presidential election in Iran’s history: in 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

As has been the case since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and those calling for radical change have been barred from running, while the vote itself will not be overseen by internationally recognized monitors.

There were signs of wider public disenchantment with the vote. More than 1 million votes were voided, according to the results, usually a sign that people feel compelled to vote but don’t want to choose either candidate.

Total turnout was 39.9%, according to the results. The 2021 presidential election that elected Raisi saw a turnout of 48.8%, while the parliamentary election in March saw a turnout of 40.6%.

There have been calls for a boycott, including from jailed Nobel Peace Laureate Narges Mohammadi. Mir Hossein Mousavi, one of the leaders of the 2009 Green Movement protests who remains under house arrest, also refused to vote with his wife, his daughter said.

There has also been criticism that Pezeshkian represents just another government-endorsed candidate. In a documentary about the reformist candidate on state television, one woman said her generation was “moving towards the same level” of animosity towards the government that Pezeshkian’s generation had in the 1979 revolution.

Jalili, once described by CIA Director Bill Burns as “terribly opaque” in negotiations, likely would have won outright had the hardliners not split Friday’s vote. Jalili is known as the “Living Martyr” after losing a leg in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and is famous among Western diplomats for his haranguing lectures and tough stances.

Qalibaf, a former general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and chief of Iran’s police, was believed to have a broader power base despite being dogged by corruption allegations and his role in past violent crackdowns.

He quickly backed Jalili in granting the result and criticized Pezeshkian for allying himself with President Hassan Rouhani and his former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. The two brokered Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which later collapsed after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal.

“The road is not over yet, and despite the fact that I personally respect Dr. Pezeshkian, … I am asking all the revolutionary forces and my supporters to help stem the tide that is causing an important part of our economic and political. problems today,” Qalibaf said in a statement.

Now the question is whether Pezeshkian will be able to attract voters to his campaign. On election day, he offered comments about reaching out to the West after the vote was apparently aimed at boosting turnout for his campaign — even after being targeted by a veiled warning from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Pezeshkian was an overall disappointing candidate,” geopolitical consultancy Eurasia Group said in an analysis ahead of Friday’s vote. “Should he qualify for a runoff, his position would weaken as the conservative voting bloc coalesces behind a single candidate.”

Raisi, 63, died in the May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and others. He was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor. However, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran carried out in 1988 and for his role in the bloody crackdown on dissent that followed protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police for allegedly be wearing a headscarf or hijab inappropriately.

Friday’s vote saw only one reported attack around the election. Gunmen opened fire on a van carrying ballot boxes in the restive southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, killing two police officers and wounding others, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. The province regularly sees violence between security forces and the militant group Jaish al-Adl, as well as drug traffickers.

The run-off election comes as wider tensions grip the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. In April, Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel. Militia groups that Tehran arms in the region – such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels – are engaged in fighting and have escalated their attacks.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic continues to enrich uranium to near-weapons-grade levels and maintains a large enough stockpile to build — should it choose to do so — more nuclear weapons.

Vakil said that “it will only remain if the general public, the 60% who stayed at home, will come out and protect themselves from those harsh views,” Jalili claims. “That’s what next Friday will be about. “

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Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran. Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.

Jon Gambrell and Amir Vahdat, Associated Press