Pezeshkian wins Iran presidential runoff vote

Reformist candidate Massoud Pezeshkian who ran for president in snap elections in Iran won the top executive office in a tight runoff race on Friday against principlist Saeed Jalili.

The final results of Friday’s presidential runoff election was announced on Saturday morning by the country’s election headquarters that runs under the country’s interior ministry.

The headquarters started releasing the results in phased updates right after polls closed and vote counting started at midnight.

According to the eighth and final update, over 30,530,157 out of over 64 million eligible voters cast their ballots on Friday to choose a successor for the late President Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash in May.

Pezeshkian secured 16,384,403 votes and Saeed Jalili got 13,538,179.

The turnout was 49.8 percent in the runoff, up from 39.9 percent in the first round held last week.

Pezeshkian, 69, is a heart surgeon by profession, a seasoned lawmaker, and a former minister of health.

He ran on a platform of settling disputes with the West, ridding the country of Western-imposed sanctions, and improving the country’s ailing economy.

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