Iran presidential election heads to second round Pezeshkian and Jalili advance to July 5 runoff

Iran will hold a second round of presidential elections on July 5, as no candidate secured more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round.

In the initial voting, former Iranian Health Minister Masoud Pezeshkian received over 10.4 million votes, while Saeed Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, earned more than 9.4 million votes, Caliber.Az reports per Iranian media.

The total number of ballots counted was over 24.4 million.

The two leading candidates will face off in the upcoming runoff to determine Iran’s next president.

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.

The 2021 presidential election that elected late hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi saw a 42 per cent turnout, while the March parliamentary election resulted in a 41 per cent turnout.

Raisi, 63, died in a May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and others.