Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that the turnout in the first round of the country's presidential election was "lower than expected", semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during the 35th anniversary of the death of the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, at Khomeini's shrine in southern Tehran, Iran June 3, 2024. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that the turnout in the first round of the country's presidential election was "lower than expected", semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Turnout was about 40%, Iran's interior ministry said - the lowest on record since the 1979 revolution.
"We hope that people's turnout for the second round will be important and a source of pride for the Islamic Republic," Khamenei said, calling upon Iranians to cast their ballot this coming Friday.
Friday's vote will be a tight race between lawmaker Massoud Pezeshkian, the sole moderate in the original field of four candidates, and former Revolutionary Guards member Saeed Jalili.
The election is to elect a successor to President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.
Khamenei added that the lower-than-expected turnout was due to "several factors" and that claims that non-voters were against the Islamic Republic were "strongly mistaken".
Reporting by Dubai Newsroom, Elwely Elwelly; Editing by Michael Georgy and Alex Richardson
The U.S. military said on Thursday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war.
The U.S. military said on Wednesday that it was launching fresh strikes on Iran aimed at keeping the critical Strait of Hormuz open to traffic, hours after President Donald Trump declared that an interim agreement to end the war with Iran was "over."
Control over the Strait of Hormuz has become a "golden weapon" to Iran, for which it is willing to risk new escalations with the United States, and is a bigger priority than a nuclear programme for which it accepted decades of sanctions.
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