Voting has begun in Iran’s snap presidential election, with residents heading to polling stations in the capital Tehran and other cities to cast their ballots.
Four candidates, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Saeed Jalili, Masoud Pezeshkian and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, are vying for the presidency following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.
Two conservative candidates, Amir-Hossein Qazizadeh Hashemi and Alireza Zakani, withdrew on Thursday to avoid splitting votes in their political camp.
Polling stations will remain open until 6 p.m. local time (14:30 GMT), but the process is likely to be extended by the Interior Ministry, as was the case in previous elections.
At least 64 million people in Iran are eligible to vote in this year’s presidential election, most of them young. In the 2021 presidential election, 59.3 million people had the right to vote.
About 10 million Iranians living abroad are also eligible to vote in special elections at 344 designated polling stations set up in different countries.
In Iran, a total of 58,640 polling stations are open, including more than 6,000 in Tehran.
“The election results will be announced on Saturday afternoon,” Mohammad Taqi Shahcheraghi, head of the election staff, told state TV on Thursday.
If none of the four candidates receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the election will continue in a second round on July 5, where the two candidates with the most votes will face off.
According to pre-election polls, three candidates, Qalibaf, Pezeshkian and Jalili, are in the running for election. Qalibaf and Jalili are from the conservative camp, and Pezeshkian is the only reformist candidate.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message posted on the X social network late Thursday, urged people to vote in large numbers “in all corners of the country.”
Turnout in the 2021 presidential election, when Ebrahim Raisi won by a landslide, was at a record low of around 49 percent. The previous lowest turnout was in 1993, with 50.6 percent, AA writes.
E.Dz.
