Iranians are voting in a runoff election on Friday to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a May helicopter crash in the country’s northwest along with the foreign minister and several other officials.
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.
Domestic issues that have loomed over the race include a renewed crackdown on mandatory headscarfs for women and a proposed gasoline price hike, as well as years of economic malaise marked by widespread unemployment and high inflation.
After a record-low turnout in the first round of voting June 28, it remains unclear how many Iranians will take part in Friday’s poll. Iranian law requires that a runoff if no one candidate gets more than 50% of all votes cast in the first round.
While 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has final say on all matters of state, presidents can bend Iran toward confrontation or negotiations with the West.
Here is the latest:
Iranians are again voting at the gravesite of a general slain in a 2020 U.S. drone strike in Iraq.
State television aired images of people lining up to vote at the grave of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Kerman.
Soleimani, a leader of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, was seen a popular figure seen as a symbol of national resilience in the face of four decades of U.S. pressure.
For the U.S. and Israel, he was a shadowy figure in command of Iran’s proxy forces, responsible for fighters in Syria backing President Bashar Assad and for the deaths of American troops in Iraq.
A U.S. drone strike killed Soleimani, 62, and others as they traveled from Baghdad’s international airport on Jan. 3, 2020.
The Pentagon said then-President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to take “decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing” a man once referred to by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “living martyr of the revolution.”
Iran’s acting president Mohammad Mokhber said that more people have voted in a presidential runoff than had voted at the same time during the first round of last week, speaking about an hour after polls opened, and said he hoped to see higher turnout overall.
The first round, held June 28, saw the lowest turnout in the country’s history, 39.9 percent.
It was not possible to confirm Mokhber’s claim.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei voted in the country’s runoff election aimed at choosing a new president for the country after forem President Ebrahim Raisi died in a May helicopter crash.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
