Iran’s top leader shrugs off weak turnout numbers as presidential runoff vote begins

Iran’s top leader attempted to shrug off plunging turnout numbers as Iranian voters headed to the polls Friday for a runoff presidential election between a moderate candidate and one of the country’s best-known hard-liners.

Cardiologist and former Health Minister Masoud Pezeshkian, who favors economic reforms and a revival of the defunct 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers, is facing off against Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator who is the favorite of the country’s anti-U.S. hard-line factions, after the two men finished first and second in a multi-candidate first round a week ago.

Turnout in the first round was a record low 40%, even after top officials urged voters to participate as a sign of faith in the Islamic Republic established after the 1979 revolution.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who cast his own ballot Friday, insisted this week that the falling turnout numbers were not a sign the regime’s popular support was weakening as well.

“This line of thinking is absolutely wrong,” the 85-year-old ayatollah, who retains the final say on all major foreign and domestic policy matters, told a gathering of scholars Wednesday.

But he again signaled hope for a bigger turnout than was registered in the June 28 vote as he cast his ballot Friday, telling reporters, “I have heard that people’s enthusiasm is more than the first round. I hope it is so. And if it is so, it is pleasing.”

Mr. Pezeshkian, the only relative moderate allowed to run in the snap election called after hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in May, finished just ahead of Mr. Jalili in the first round, but several conservative also-rans dropped out and endorsed Mr. Jalili.

Both candidates cast their ballots at polling places in south Tehran, The Associated Press reported Friday morning. Lines at polling places in the capital appeared to be relatively modest, the AP reported.

Anti-U.S. and anti-Israel hard-liners remain in firm control of the Iranian legislature and it is not clear how much of his agenda Mr. Pezeshkian could carry out even if he wins.