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The stunning victory of reformist Massoud Pezeshkian in Iran’s presidential runoff reflects deep dissatisfaction with the direction of the country in recent years and could open up new avenues for cooperation with the West.
Pezeshkian won 16,384,403 votes, defeating ultra-conservative candidate Sayyed Jalili, who received 13,538,179 votes, with a final turnout of 49.8%, a significant increase from the same period last year. Voter turnout hits record low The first round of voting saw 39 percent turnout. Pezeshkian came in first place in the first round of the election, defeating three conservative opponents. The turnout included more than a million invalid votes.
“Without your company, empathy and trust, the difficult road ahead would not be easy,” Pezeshkian, who has advocated for making headscarves optional for women and ending internet restrictions that require people to use VPN connections to avoid government censorship, said after his victory.
Under the slogan “For Iran,” Pezeshkian pledged to give a voice to the voiceless and said protests must not be suppressed with batons. Although some saw him as naive in high politics, a large part of his campaign was deliberately built around his personal integrity and the fact that he had not held a ministerial post for the past decade. His supporters immediately called for the release of political prisoners in jail, symbolizing the pent-up demand he may have trouble meeting.
Pezeshkian faces difficulties in trying to bring about change, and while he says he is loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he has also said he would resign if he feels he is being obstructed and called on people to withdraw from the political process.
The president’s exact powers in the foreign policy arena are disputed, but Pezeshkian has argued in successive, often heated, televised debates that unless he can secure some lifting of sanctions he cannot bring about change, including a reduction in 40 percent inflation, which would require him to adopt a less confrontational approach to international relations.
During the campaign, he said Iran was trapped in an economic cage because of its foreign policy and needed to cooperate more to get a chance at sanctions relief.
His de facto running mate in the election was Javad Zarif, former foreign ministerHe negotiated the nuclear deal in 2015 that led to the lifting of sanctions, but Donald Trump announced in 2018 that the United States was withdrawing from the program.
Masoud Pezeshkian, center, casts his ballot and gives a victory sign as he is accompanied by former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, at a polling station in Shahr-e-Qods near Tehran, Iran, on Friday. Vahid Salemi/AP
Zarif said sanctions meant Iran was being circumvented. Stocks rose on news of the reformist victory.
Jalili, a former confidant of Iran’s supreme leader and a former nuclear negotiator, claimed that Iran could prosper through closer economic ties with the West. Far from being a cage, he said, Iran is a sanctuary.
Pezeshkian’s victory is all the more remarkable because no reformists were allowed to run in the last presidential election in 2021, and the high point of Iranian reformism is thought to have long passed, with many voters believing that there is no point in going to the polls since the “deep government” makes all the decisions.
Suppression of “Women, Life, Liberty” protest The 2022 election will only make people feel that the path to change through the ballot box is closed. Many senior reformists in the Green movement and political prisoners in Evin prison have called for a boycott of the election.
However, after Pezeshkian won the first round of elections, his campaign team became more confident that he could win as long as more voters participated in the runoff, breaking the rule in Iranian politics that “low voter turnout will lead to the defeat of reformists.”
Supporters of the more centrist conservative Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will obviously not vote for Jalili, with whom he has sharp ideological differences. Zarif urged those who abstain to vote, saying: “Those who did not participate in the first round of voting, you sent a message in the first stage, and now you must complete your message with your presence.”
“We have to prove that the people are the people, not those who think they are the guardians of the people,” said Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, a former communications minister and another major supporter of Pezeshkian.
Reformists began to worry Saturday night that a sudden surge in late votes was a sign the regime was trying to rig the results following accusations it was manipulating the election, amid reports that government funds were being used to send clerics into the countryside to consolidate support in the Jalili heartland.
But then late Saturday, government news channels leaked news of Pezeshkian’s victory, and Iran’s election headquarters declared him the official winner, sending his supporters into the streets of Tehran.
About 5,000 people attended his final campaign rally at a Tehran football stadium, a sign that his campaign may not have generated the support he needs among abstainers.After a quiet campaign stop in the capital, his supporters cheered and poured into Tehran’s streets to celebrate a victory that few expected.
In the parliamentary elections earlier this year Low voter turnoutconservatives won a landslide victory over reformers. Meanwhile, Ghalibaf’s authority as speaker of parliament was weakened by his defeat in the presidential election. The political face of parliament will be one of the many obstacles facing the new president, as it has the power to impeach ministers.
The first round of voting on June 28 saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history since the revolution in 1979. Iranian officials have long viewed the turnout as a symbol of the legitimacy of the country’s Shiite theocracy, but Khamenei said those who stayed away did not do so because they opposed the regime.
The reason for holding early presidential elections is Ibrahim Raisi diesThe decision was made by an 88-member committee of experts after the death of incumbent President Raisi, who was seen as a potential successor to the 85-year-old supreme leader, in a helicopter crash in May.
Now the West must decide whether to help Pezeshkian or maintain sweeping sanctions over Iran’s escalating nuclear program and its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Iran has enriched uranium to near weapons-grade levels and has enough stockpile to make several nuclear weapons, but does not yet have the warhead or missile technology.
It also supplies drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.Besides Zarif, Pezeshkian’s second foreign policy adviser is Mehdi Sanei, a former ambassador to Moscow.
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