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According to reports, Pezeshkian won the runoff election with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million.
Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that Massoud Pezeshkian, an Iranian heart surgeon and member of parliament who has pledged cooperation with the West, has won the country’s presidential runoff election, beating rival Saeed Jalili.
“After receiving a majority in Friday’s vote, Pezeshkian has become Iran’s next president,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Associated Press reported that according to results released by authorities, Pezeshkian won Friday’s election with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million.
According to the Associated Press, Pezeshkian’s supporters took to the streets in Tehran and other cities before dawn on Saturday to celebrate him widening his lead over Jalili.
Videos posted on social media showed Pezeshkian’s supporters dancing in the streets in many cities and towns across the country, and drivers honking their horns to celebrate his victory.
Turnout for the election was about 50 percent, with a close race between Pezeshkian, the only moderate of the original four candidates who pledged to open Iran to the world, and Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator who was a strong advocate of closer ties between Iran and Russia and China.
Friday’s runoff election came after a historically low turnout, with more than 60 percent of Iranian voters abstaining from voting in the June 28 election to choose a successor to Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash.
Political analysts say Pezeshkian’s victory could promote a pragmatic foreign policy, ease tensions over currently stalled negotiations with world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal and improve prospects for social liberalization and political pluralism in Iran.
But Pezeshkian, a former health minister, has publicly said he has no intention of taking on Iran’s powerful clerical and hardline security elite, and many Iranian voters are skeptical that he can deliver on his election promises.
Both presidential candidates vowed to revive a struggling economy that has been plagued by mismanagement and reimposed sanctions since 2018, when the United States under Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal.
