In this photo provided by Iranian Students’ News Agency, ISNA, hard-line former Iranian senior nuclear negotiator and candidate for the presidential election Saeed Jalili casts his ballot in a polling station, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 28, 2024.
After counting over 12 million votes, Pezeshkian had 5.3 million while Jalili held 4.8 million, Iranian state television reported. Another candidate, hard-line speaker of the parliament Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, had some 1.6 million votes. Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi had more than 95,000 votes.
It did not offer any turnout figures for the race yet - a crucial component of whether Iran’s electorate backs its Shiite theocracy after years of economic turmoil and mass protests. Iranian law requires that a winner gets more than 50% of all votes cast. If that doesn’t happen, the race’s top two candidates will advance to a runoff a week later. There’s been only one runoff presidential election in Iran’s history: in 2005, when hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bested former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.