Iran presidential elections: Pezeshkian and Saeed Jalili in neck and neck battle, as counting underway

The vote counting is underway in Iran’s presidential election and pro-reform candidate Masoud Pezeshkian has been leading with 5,955,781 votes. Hard-liner Saeed Jalili has been following him with5,560,321 votes, as per the latestofficial figures released by the Interior Ministry.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf has received 1,891,385 votes, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi 111,967 votes in the14,070,462 ballots counted so far.

According to Iranian state television, the early results did not initially suggest that Jalili would clinch outright victory in Friday’s election as it set the stage for a runoff election to replace late hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.

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The state television also did not report any turnout figures for the race yet, which is crucial to understand whether Iran’s electorate supports its Shiite theocracy after witnessing years of mass protests and economic turmoil.

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According to the Associated Press, 10 million votes have been counted till now, in which Jaili has received 4.26 million votes and Pezeshkian4.24 million.

Another candidate fraying in the elections, hard-line speaker of the parliament Mohmmad Bagher Qalibaf received some 1.38 million votes. Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi got more than 80,000 votes.

Voters get little choice in polls

Three hard-line candidates and a heart surgeon and not-so-famous reformistPezeshkian were the choices for the voters in this election.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and people demanding a radical change have been stopped from contesting the elections.

The voting took place at a timethe Middle East is gripped in wider tensions over theIsrael-Hamas warin the Gaza Strip.

Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel in April over the Gaza war. Militia groups supported by Tehran in the region - Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels - have alsobeen engaged in the war and their attacks have been escalated.

Watch:Iran election: Three-way contest between Pezeshkian, Jalili and Qalibaf

Meanwhile, Iran has been enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levelsand has maintained a stockpile which is big enough to build several nuclear weapons, if the country wants to, according to reports.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi along with others had made calls for a boycott of the elections.

One of the leaders of the 2009 Green Movement protests Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has been under house arrest, refused to vote with his wife, said his daughter.

Iran faced a major blow when in a May 19 helicopter crash, 63-year-old Raisi died along with the country’s foreign minister and others. He was Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's protege and a potential successor.

(With inputs from agencies)