Iran is to hold run-off presidential election on July 5 as no candidate secured 50% of voters the interior ministry said on Saturday (June 29), Reuters reports.
Earlier preliminary results from Friday's vote had shown the sole moderate candidate Massoud Pezeshkian held a slight lead over his hardline challenger former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
An Iranian lawmaker of Azeri ethnicity, Massoud Pezeshkian is the only moderate candidate approved by the Guardian Council for the 2024 election and is backed by the pro-reform camp.
His prospects depend on attracting millions of disillusioned voters who have stayed home in elections since 2020.
A physician by profession, Pezeshkian served as the health minister under reformist President Mohammad Khatami from 2001 to 2005 and has held a seat in parliament since 2008.
Pezeshkian has been vocal in his criticism of the Islamic Republic for its lack of transparency about the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman in 2022 that sparked several months of unrest.
Pezeshkian was barred from the 2021 presidential election.
Iran is to hold a run-off presidential election on July 5 as no candidate secured 50% of the votes on Saturday (June 29)
Preliminary results earlier had shown hardline conservative Saeed Jalili locked in a tight race with low-key moderate Massoud Pezeshkian and a run-off vote in sight.
Jalili, a former chief nuclear negotiator who in 2001 ran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's office for four years, had made an unsuccessful bid in 2013 for the presidency and withdrew from the 2021 race to support former President Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash on May 19.
So far, more than 19 million votes have been counted, with Pezeshkian winning over 8.3 million votes and Jalili over 7.1 million, provisional results by the interior ministry showed.
Some insiders said the turnout was around 40%, lower than expected by Iran's clerical rulers, while witnesses told Reuters that polling stations in Tehran and some other cities were not crowded.
Iran's Tasnim news agency said a run-off election was "very likely" to pick the next president.
If no candidate wins at least 50% plus one vote from all ballots cast, including blank votes, a run-off between the top two candidates is held on the first Friday after the result is declared.
Jalili is a hardline diplomat who lost his right leg in the 1980s when fighting for the Guards in the Iran-Iraq war.
Holder of a PhD in political science, Jalili has declared being a pious believer in Iran's "velayat-e faqih", or rule by supreme jurisprudence, a system of Islamic government that provides the basis for Khamenei's position.
Appointed by Khamenei, Jalili served as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for five years from 2007, a position that automatically made him Iran's chief nuclear negotiator.
A former deputy foreign minister, Jalili was appointed by Khamenei in 2013 as a member of the Expediency Council, a body that mediates in disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council.
