On the 5th of July, the run-off round of the Iranian Presidential Elections was held, with the moderate candidate Masoud Pezeshkian prevailing over hardline candidate Saeed Jalili on what has been a tightly-contested presidential election that followed the unexpected passing of the incumbent president Ebrahim Raisi. The election of Pezeshkian as the first reformist president in twenty years holds significance of its own, but to what extent remains to be seen. Below are the coverage and review of the 2024 Iranian Presidential Elections:

Background to the Iranian Presidential Elections

On the 20th of May, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei announced an early Presidential Election set to take place on 28th of June. The news came after the previous day’s helicopter crash that killed eight, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian President, a hardliner who was widely considered to be a favourite to succeed Khamenei as the Grand Ayatollah.

80 candidates have filed their registration for the Presidential elections from 30th of May to 3rd of June. Among them, six candidates were selected to run on a slate that included nuclear negotiator Saeid Jalili, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani and parliament speaker Mohammed Ghalibaf, but did not include Mojtaba Khamenei, Grand Ayatollah’s son who had been among favourites to succeed alongside Raisi. Among the candidates only Masoud Pezeshkian, a former cardiac surgeon, was considered to be a reformist. Hashemi and Zakani would later withdraw, voting in favour of other hardliners.

What Happened on the Iranian Presidential Elections

On the 28th of June, the first round of Iranian Presidential Elections were held across the nation. In the election where the overall turnout stood low at 39.9%, and one million votes were voided, Massoud Pezeshkian prevailed over Saeid Jalili by securing 10.4 million votes to Jalili’s 9.4 million votes in the round where the divide among the hardliner votes have given a surprising lead for Pezeshkian. Per Iranian law, the run-off, second round of the elections was declared as no candidate attained an absolute majority in the first round.

On the 5th of July, the run-off round of the election was held between Pezeshkian and Jalili. There Pezeshkian once again prevailed as he was named the winner with 16.3 million votes (54%) to Jalili’s 13.5 million votes (46%) on what ended up becoming a tight victory for the reformist candidate. Turnout remained historically low for a presidential election with 49.6% of the voters cast their votes, which included 600,000 voided votes.

What does Pezeshkian’s victory mean?

Pezeshkian’s election into the Iranian presidency is significant for several reasons.

On one hand, Pezeshkian’s victory is a rare victory for the Iranian reformists who have formed government between 1997 and 2005, and have also been able to make significant traction under former president Hassan Rouhani. However, the waves of oppression, combined with limited progress made during their time in power, had made it difficult for the reformists to generate much power in recent years. Pezeshkian’s victory, even as he himself did not expect to be allowed to run, does appear to come under a miscalculation by Khamenei and the Guardian Council, who let him run as the sole reformist candidate since Pezeshkian was not considered a major threat by the hardliner establishment. His victory, even with major voter disillusionment and a tight margin, could thus be considered the voicing of change that was able to benefit from external factors.

At the same time, it also provides a distinct possibility of improving relations with the West, in particular the United States. Much of the talking points made during the Iranian elections featured both candidates trying to convince the public of their ability to lift the sanctions in of a Trump victory, especially as such probability remains very high ahead of the United States Presidential Election in autumn.

It could be argued that this was why Pezeshkian’s campaign had worked well, in part thanks to his strategy to target his hardliner opponents for their anti-West stances that have heavily damaged the Iranian economy. With the Iranian economy still affected by the sanctions that were introduced during the Trump administration, and Pezeshkian’s criticism of Raisi’s economic policies, it is possible for that Iran could be brought back to the negotiation table with the United States and the West.

That said, however, more is to be seen as to whether Pezeshkian can push for more progressive change in domestic policies or Middle East policies. Most of the political power, after all, is centred around the Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, to whom Pezeshkian had pledged loyalty, limiting the scope of the changes that the Iranian President could realistically pursue. This is particularly evident in the regional policies where the President holds no direct power over the Quds Force, and the IRGC holds significant power in various positions, making it unlikely for Iran to change its region-wide policies in the short-term future.

But it is possible for Pezeshkian to push for smaller changes, especially on domestic policies where censorship and social freedoms, such as women’s and minorities’ rights, could be eased. Pezeshkian’s stances on those issues have been a mixed bag, but one that allows for rooms of flexibility. His firm belief, as an ethnic Azeri coming from the Kurdish city of Mahabad, is that expanding ethnic rights could be used as a way to keep Iran a unitary state. His stance on women’s rights is a more mixed one, with his historic stance on enforcing Hijab at his university and early parliamentarian days countered by a more proactive approach in his recent remarks, where he openly opposed morality police and that the government ‘have no right to coerce women and girls, and I am ashamed of these behaviours towards them’. He has also expressed his support for reducing internet and cultural censorship.

While smaller in scale and moderate in significance, those reforms could be used as a starting point for Pezeshkian to win over the Iran population that not only been recently been undergoing years of protest, most recently in 2023 following the death of Mahsa Amini, but has shown their disillusionment with the state of affairs through low election turnouts and a high number of spoiled ballots. Now, more is to be seen on if those promises will be met.