Tehran. According to Iran’s Ministry of Interior, voting began on Friday for the competition between reformist candidate Masoud Pezhekian and establishment supporter Saeed Jalili to succeed Ibrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in Iran last May.The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cast his vote when voting began at 8:00 a.m. local time, state television reported.
Interior Minister Ahmed Vahidi told the state TV, “We have started voting for the second phase of the 14th presidential election on Friday morning. Nirbachan will elect the future president from among two candidates in 58,638 polling stations of the country and all polling stations abroad.
The vote is going to be held against the backdrop of increased regional tensions over the ongoing war in Gaza, Iran’s dispute with the West over Iran’s nuclear program and people’s dissatisfaction with the state of the embargoed economy.
According to Iran’s Election Commission, in last week’s first round of elections, the only reformist candidate, Pezheshkian, received the highest number of votes, 42 percent. Jalili, the former nuclear negotiator, came in second place with about 39 percent of the votes. According to the provisions of the Constitution of Iran, in the event that no candidate reaches 50 percent of the votes, there is a provision for a run-off between the two main competitors.
In the last election, only 40 percent of the 61 million Iranian voters voted. This is the lowest voter turnout in any presidential election since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has said that the participation in the first phase was “not as expected” but that it was not “an act against the system”.
In the voting held last week, the Speaker of the Conservative Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf got the third place with 13.8 percent of votes, while Maulvi Mustafa Pourmohammadi got less than 1 percent of votes.
In Iran, the presidential election was scheduled to be held in 2025, but this election was postponed after the death of ultra-conservative President Raisi in a helicopter crash in May.
Iran’s economic problems, international relations, low turnout and internet bans were debated twice.
A 69-year-old cardiologist who has been representing the northwestern city of Tabriz since 2008, Pezheskian has been representing in the parliament since 2008.
He has received the support of Iran’s main reformist coalition. Former reformist Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani have supported his campaign.
Another candidate, 58-year-old Jalili, has gathered a large base of radical supporters. He has the support of Ghalibaf and two other ultra-conservative candidates. They were out of the competition in the first stage.