Despite some voters pushing for change by backing the only revolutionary member, experts claim, the first round of Iran’s presidential poll revealed shrinking aid for both reformers and republicans. The reformist candidate Saeed Jalili and reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian took the lead in the polls on Friday to replace late authoritarian president Ebrahim Raisi, who passed away in a helicopter crash last month. In the official results announced Saturday, Pezeshkian led with 10.4 million votes ( 42.4 % ), followed by Jalili at 9.4 million ( 38.6 % ). A third conservative candidate, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the current speaker of parliament and former mayor of Tehran, was a distant third at 3.3 million ( 13.8 % ).
Friday’s voting, marked by a generally low attendance,” clearly shows that both reformers ‘ and liberals ‘ bases have greatly shrunk”, said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group think container.
In the guide- up to the poll, Iran’s major reformist coalition supported Pezeshkian, with endorsements by past presidents Syed Khatami and Hassan Rouhani, a average. On social media platform X, Vaez wrote that” the reformers brought out the great artillery and tried their best to mobilize their base,” but “it was merely insufficient.”
Also, the conservatives failed to gain enough votes “despite the huge resources they deployed”, he added. Vess noted that the total votes cast by Jalili and Ghalibaf was 12.8 million. That figure was well below Raisi’s 18 million votes in the 2021 vote.
Only about 40 % of the 61 million eligible voters cast ballots, which is a record-low participation in the Islamic Republic, where some citizens have lost faith in the process. More than one million votes were tampered with.
For Vaez, the decline in turnout, from around 49 % in 2021, was” a real embarrassment for the leadership” in Iran, where ultimate political power lies with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Social analyst Mohammad Reza Manafi claimed that Pezeshkian’s leadership reflected a desire to “fundamental changes” in terms of the economy and relationships with the rest of the world. People who favor Pezeshkian, he continued, “hope he can slowly stop the condition from worsening.”
Iran has been suffering from the financial effects of international sanctions, which have caused soaring inflation, high unemployment, and a record-low for the Egyptian lira against the US dollar.
Pezeshkian, a resolute spirit surgeon who has been in congress since 2008 and has represented the northern city of Tabriz, came out on top thanks to his” fresh record without any accusations of economic corruption,” according to Manafi. The revolutionary urged” creative relations” with European cities and Washington to “get Iran out of its loneliness.” In comparison, Jalili is commonly recognised for his unyielding anti- Western stance. He was formerly a nuclear mediator and is now a Khamenei representative on Iran’s highest security body, the Supreme National Security Council.
