Reformist legislator Masoud Pezeshkian and conservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili will face off in a second round of voting after neither candidate secured a majority of the votes in Iran’s election Friday.

Surprise elections in Iran were called after conservative President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19, opening what one expert called a “void in the Islamic Republic’s leadership.”

“None of the candidates could garner the absolute majority of the votes, therefore, the first and second contenders who got the most votes will be referred to the Guardian Council,” Interior Ministry spokesperson Mohsen Eslami announced on Saturday.

Pezeshkian and Jalili will now advance to the runoff election on July 5.

After Friday’s voting, Pezeshkian took a slight lead with 10.45 million votes over Jalili’s 9.47 million, according to an initial tally reported by The Guardian. Both of them edged out conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf with 3.38 million votes and former Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi with 206,000.

A total of 24,735,185 people voted, representing a turnout of around 40%. That is the lowest turnout in an Iranian election since the 1979 revolution, according to Middle East Eye.

“This demonstrates that a majority of the Iranian public remains disaffected from participation in the Islamic Republic’s restricted elections, which are neither free nor fair,” the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)........

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