Iranian women cast their ballots at a polling station during elections to select members of parliament and a key clerical body, in Tehran on March 1, 2024.
ATTA KENARE | AFP
Iran is voting for its next president Friday in a snap election following the unexpected death of former President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash — and the outcome could have implications far beyond its borders.
While there was no clear frontrunner leading up to the vote, all but one of the six candidates approved to run are conservative hardliners — and half of them have been sanctioned by Western governments. Of the six initial contenders, four remain in the race after two dropped out on Thursday.
If there is no clear majority after Friday’s vote, the top two candidates face a second round of voting on July 5. The winner will serve for four years — and faces no shortage of challenges.
The election comes at a fraught time for the country of 88 million, and turnout is expected to be low. Iranians will go to the polls against the backdrop of a battered economy, widespread popular discontent and harsh crackdowns on dissent. Iran is also dealing with high inflation, heavy Western sanctions, mounting tensions with the U.S., ramped-up Iranian nuclear enrichment and the Israel-Hamas war.
Voting is open to roughly 61 million eligible Iranians, but many have pledged to boycott, pointing out the lack of genuine choice for voters. Iran’s ultra-conservative Guardian Council controls who is allowed on the ballot and only approved six candidates to run for the presidency, out of a list of 80 registrants.
Most of the candidates are hardliners who hold staunch anti-Western positions, with just one representing the reformist camp. Women who had registered to run were all disqualified by the Council.
Iran’s last presidential and parliamentary elections in 2021 and March 2024, respectively, saw the lowest recorded voter turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Many observers expect that trend to continue.
“In the past, the government has put great emphasis on participation to claim popular legitimacy as a republic … the decline in turnout over the last several years underscores the public’s growing disillusionment with the system,” Iran analysts Ali Vaez and Naysan Rafat at the think tank Crisis Group wrote in a report.
“Many citizens have come to doubt that they can produce meaningful change through the ballot box,” they wrote. “A major reversal of that trend appears unlikely.”
Who is running?
Two candidates appear to be leading the race, according to national polls: Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Saeed Jalili, both staunch conservatives. The candidate field features only one reformist candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian. Two of the six initial contenders, Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi and Alireza Zakani, dropped out of the race on Thursday.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf: Iran’s current speaker of Parliament and a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, Qalibaf also…
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