Iranian Presidential Election

Preliminary thoughts on the Iranian presidential election runoff concluded on 5 July 2024.

Pezeshkian

Masoud Pezeshkian has won election as Iran’s 9th president. He secured about 53% of vote against 44% for Said Jalili. Pezeshkian is most definitely not the choice of Iran’s political establishment. There was a great deal of antipathy towards him in the days leading up to the election, and towards people on his team (e.g., former FM Javad Zarif). Quite a lot of moaning today by conservatives on social media and media. Quick thoughts: say what you will (i.e., “haters gonna hate” this); but Iranian democracy is vibrant. Voter turnout was about 50% (low but higher than expected). Pezeshkian’s margin of victory (ca. 9%) shows that there was no ballot stuffing, etc.

Compare Iran’s runoff election to elections in:

UK: Sir Kid Starver and Labour Party won a “landslide” with 33.9% of the total votes cast, or 9,660,081 votes, thanks to Britain’s idiotic “first-past-the-post” version of democracy. No runoff elections are conducted unlike in France, where runoff elections for Parliament will be held on 7 July 2024. In other words, 66.1% of voters rejected Labour. But here we are.

US: The Beavis & Butt-head Election. Need I say more?

Foreign Policy:

No change expected vis-à-vis support for Palestine and Axis of Resistance. IRGC dominates this aspect of foreign policy. However, Masoud Pezeshkian has stated that he is willing to negotiate directly with the U.S. for the lifting of sanctions and re-working of the JCPOA agreement that Trump abandoned. I personally doubt Pezeshkian’s approach will yield results, but this aspect of his platform appealed to Iranian voters who are suffering under U.S.-imposed economic sanctions.