Reformist
Masoud Pezeshkian wins Iran presidential election
Celebration
in streets of Tehran as run-off victory over hardliner Saeed Jalili became
apparent on Saturday morning
Guardian
staff and agencies
Sat 6 Jul
2024 04.47 BST
Reformist
candidate Masoud Pezeshkian has won Iran’s runoff presidential election,
beating hardliner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the west and ease
enforcement on the country’s mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions
and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic.
A vote count
offered by authorities on Saturday morning put Pezeshkian as the winner with
16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million after Friday’s voting.
Supporters
of Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, entered the streets of
Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate as his lead grew and victory
became apparent over Jalili – a former nuclear negotiator close to Iran’s
supreme leader.
Pezeshkian
promised no radical changes to Iran’s Shia theocracy in his campaign and long
has held the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the final arbiter of
all matters of state. But even Pezeshkian’s modest aims will be challenged by
an Iranian government still largely held by hardliners.
The first
round of voting on 28 June saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic
Republic since the 1979 revolution. Iranian officials have long pointed to
turnout as a sign of support for the country’s Shia theocracy, which has been
under strain after years of sanctions crushing Iran’s economy, mass
demonstrations and intense crackdowns on all dissent.
Government
officials up to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted a higher
participation rate as voting got under way, with state television airing images
of modest lines at some polling centres.
However,
online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several
dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security
presence on the streets.
More than 61
million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18
million of them between 18 and 30. Voting was to end at 6pm but was extended
until midnight to boost participation.
The late
president, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter crash, was seen as a
protege of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader. While Khamenei
remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up
winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy towards either
confrontation or collaboration with the west.
Many knew
Raisi for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988,
and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests
over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over
allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
In April,
Iran launched its first ever direct attack on Israel, while militia groups that
Tehran arms in the region – such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi
rebels – are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran is
enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large
enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so.
The campaign
also repeatedly touched on what would happen if Donald Trump won the November
election in the US. Trump withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Iran has held indirect talks with Joe Biden’s administration, although there
has been no clear movement back towards constraining Tehran’s nuclear programme
in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.
With
Associated Press
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