Iranians are voting in a runoff election on Friday to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi. Voters will choose between hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, who has aligned himself with those seeking a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.<\/p>\n
Raisi was killed in a May helicopter crash in the country’s northwest along with the foreign minister and several other officials.
\nAfter a record-low turnout in the first round of voting June 28, it remains unclear how many Iranians will take part in Friday\u2019s poll. Iranian law requires that a runoff if no one candidate gets more than 50% of all votes cast in the first round.
\nVoter turnout has plunged over the past four years, which critics say shows support for the system has eroded amid growing public discontent over economic hardship and curbs on political and social freedoms.
\nOnly 48% of voters participated in the 2021 election that brought Raisi to power, and turnout was 41% in a parliamentary election in March.
\nJalili, 58, served as Iran\u2019s top nuclear negotiator under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from 2007 to 2013. His hard-line vision for Iran has been criticized by opponents as being like the \u201cTaliban\u201d and risks inflaming public tensions after years of economic hardship and mass protests.
\nPezeshkian, 69, has allied himself with relatively moderate elements of Iran\u2019s political system, including former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who helped reach Iran\u2019s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
\nPezeshkian is a heart surgeon and a longtime lawmaker from Tabriz in northwestern Iran. Jalili supporters have criticized Pezeshkian’s campaign for fearmongering, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has issued a veiled warning about outreach to the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iranians are voting in a runoff election on Friday to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi. Voters will choose between hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, who has aligned himself with those seeking a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Raisi was killed in a May helicopter …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26925,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26923\/revisions\/26925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}