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Iran Heads to Presidential Runoff

State of the Union: The hardline Saeed Jalili is poised to win next Friday.
Ahead of Iranian presidential election

The hardline Saeed Jalili and the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian are headed to a second-round runoff election after no candidate secured a winning share of the vote in Friday’s Iranian presidential election.

Per the Associated Press, Pezeshkian, who favors a softer approach to the West, took 10.4 million votes to Jalili’s 9.4 million in the lowest-turnout election of the Islamic Republic’s history. The remaining 4.7 million votes were split between other candidates or voided. Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator for the late President Ibrahim Raisi, is expected to pull ahead after the conservative vote consolidates in next Friday’s runoff.

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The election comes as the Israel–Gaza war inflames regional tensions. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct missile attack against Israel in retaliation for an Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria. The elections, occasioned by Raisi’s death in a May 19 helicopter crash, appear to come on the eve of expanded Israeli operations against Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah.