Iran | A reform-minded cardiologist won the first round of Iran’s presidential election

Iran’s the only reformist candidate in the presidential election Masoud Pezeshkian has won the first round of elections. Pezeshkian will face an extreme conservative in the second round organized next Friday By Saeed Jalil.

The 69-year-old heart surgeon and former health minister Pezeshkian collected 42.4 percent of the votes and the 58-year-old Jalili, who led Iran’s nuclear weapons negotiations, 38.6 percent, election officials announced Saturday evening, according to the AFP news agency.

The turnout was lower than Iran’s old regime would have hoped. Only about 40 percent of the country’s 61 million eligible voters went to the polls.

The so-called Council of Supervisors allowed Pezeshkian to run in part because voter turnout would increase. This didn’t help: turnout fell even further from the 2021 presidential election, when turnout of just under 49 percent was already a record low.

Dissatisfaction the old system is bubbling up in Iran, where the majority of the population is under 30 years old.

In 2022, widespread protests rocked the country after a 22-year-old protesting headscarf regulations Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by the police. The administration suppressed the protests with violence.

In his election campaign, Masoud Pezeshkian supported women’s rights, demanded social freedoms and economic reforms. In addition, he supports easing Iran’s relations with Western countries, while the rival candidate Jalili is known for his uncompromising anti-Western stance.

However, Pezeshkian does not question Iran’s clerical rule. The president is second in the hierarchy to the supreme leader, the ayatollah Ali Khamenei after.

Iranians interviewed by Reuters and AFP doubted that Pezeshkian would not bring real change to Iran. That’s why many people hoping for reforms didn’t bother to vote at all.

Early elections were decided because the old president Ebrahim Raisi died in May in a helicopter crash. A second round is needed because none of the candidates received more than half of the votes cast in the first round. In the end, there were only four candidates in the competition.