Iranian presidential candidate and reformist Dr. Massoud Pezeshkian waves to supporters during a campaign event at a stadium in Tehran on June 23, 2024. The presidential runoff election will pit a reformist candidate, critical of the mandatory headscarf rule for women, against a hard-line conservative candidate, according to the country's government-controlled media. [Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times]
Iranian voters showed dissatisfaction with the country's clerical ruling system by voting in record low numbers in Friday's presidential election, helping two pro-regime candidates struggle in a runoff election.
Friday's runoff election will choose between reformist former health minister Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian and ultra-conservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, but neither candidate received the 50 percent or more needed to win the presidency, postponing for another week the question of who will lead Iran through challenges including a struggling economy, a rift between rulers and the ruled and a neighboring war that threatens to further entangle Iran.
But despite belonging to two different camps, neither man is expected to bring about major changes in Iran, given that he must rule with the ultimate approval of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Here are the most important takeaways to emerge from Friday's election:
Iranians continue to reject the system
Just 40 percent of eligible Iranians cast ballots on Friday, according to government statistics, a historically low turnout for an Iranian presidential election and even lower than the 41 percent turnout reported in Iran's parliamentary elections this year.
Iranian elections once drew enthusiastic crowds but in recent years many have stayed home in protest against the ruling regime, which they say has destroyed the economy, slashed social and political freedoms and isolated Iran from the world.
In the 2013 presidential election, many urban, middle-class Iranians yearning for prosperity and a more open society put their faith in reformist candidate Hassan Rouhani, who they hoped would ease social and political restrictions and reach a deal to limit Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for lifting harsh Western sanctions.
Rouhani sealed the deal, but President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, sending Iran's economy plummeting again, which analysts say was also hurt by mismanagement and corruption by Iran's leaders.
And the social freedoms that Iranians had built under President Rouhani's administration while enforcement authorities turned a blind eye – such as a relaxation of dress codes to allow more Iranian women to wear mandatory headscarves draped over their shoulders – were erased in 2021 after the election of Rouhani's successor, hardline Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.
Iranians, seeing no lasting change in voting for reformers, turned their backs on the elections and opposed the regime. Public anger reached a new peak in 2022, when months of nationwide anti-government protests erupted following the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was detained in police custody. Under Raisi's government, enforcement of the modest dress law was stepped up, and she was detained for wearing a headscarf improperly.
What will happen in the runoff election?
Voters are skeptical that even a reformist candidate like Pezeshkian, who has been an outspoken critic of the government, can bring about real change, so it's far from certain that they will support him in the runoff election, even though many voters are disillusioned with the current conservative-dominated administration.
One reason Pezeshkian advanced to the runoff despite being the only reformer in the crowded field is that the other two main candidates were both hardliners who split the conservative vote. Jalili, the more ideologically staunch of the two, is not guaranteed to win over his former rival's conservative supporters, with previous polls showing many of them not willing to support him.
But that may change after rival Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf called on his supporters on Saturday to vote for Jalili to ensure a conservative victory.
Overall, the powerful establishment led by Ayatollah Khamenei seems to want Jalili to win. Khamenei is personally close to Jalili, shares his hardline views, and has recently softly criticized Pezeshkian for being too close to the West. The fact that the Clerical Council, which vets presidential candidates, allowed five conservatives and one reformist to run side by side suggests the supreme leader wants aides who support similar policies.
Does that matter?
In the Iranian system, the supreme leader makes all the major decisions, especially when it comes to big issues like nuclear negotiations and foreign policy, but he can also set the tone, as President Rouhani did in pursuing a nuclear deal with the West.
Whoever becomes president is likely to have more control over issues such as social restrictions, including the enforcement of the headscarf requirement – a constant bone of contention between Iran's rulers and its people – as well as sensitive issues such as whether female singers can perform on stage.
He will also have some influence over the country's economic policy. Iranians have struggled in recent years as inflation has soared and the value of the country's currency has plummeted, erasing the value of their salaries and savings. Fresh fruits, vegetables and meat have become prohibitively expensive for many.
But efforts to revive the economy may be limited as long as Iran continues to suffer from U.S. and European sanctions that restrict vital oil sales and banking transactions.
What does that mean for the Middle East crisis and Iran's nuclear program?
Outside Iran, attention is focused on what the future holds for the country's foreign and nuclear policies.
Iran plays a key role in a conflict that continues to threaten to spill over into the Middle East from the Gaza Strip, where longtime foe Israel is fighting a bloody war to eliminate Hamas. Iran has provided support, money and weapons to Hamas as well as Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite militia based on Israel's northern border with which Israel has traded multiple deadly attacks in recent months.
The violence has not yet escalated into war, but Israel has recently toughened its stance and warned it may shift its focus from Gaza to Lebanon, partly because Iran does not want to be drawn into a major conflict. Iran and Israel are also no longer limiting their hostilities to proxy wars or covert attacks, and both countries have carried out limited but overt attacks on each other's territory this year.
It is also unclear how the election of a new president will affect long-standing Western efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program. Six years after Trump withdrew the United States from the original nuclear deal, Iran is now closer than ever to building multiple nuclear weapons. And some of Iran's top leaders, who for decades have insisted that their nuclear program is entirely peaceful, have publicly argued that a recent missile exchange with Israel means Iran should embrace building a nuclear weapon.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
