Iranian presidential election voting begins | Middle East News

More than 59 million qualified voters in Iran will determine the fate of the four candidates in the race to succeed President Hasan Rouhani.

Fearing low turnout, Ebrahim Raisi, the head of the conservative judiciary, is widely regarded as the leader, and opinion polls for the Iranian presidential election have begun.

Iran’s nearly 60 million qualified voters will determine the fate of the four candidates in the race to succeed President Hassan Rouhani.

Voting will end in 1930 GMT, but it can be extended by two hours. The result is expected around noon on Saturday.

Due to the uncertainty surrounding Iran’s efforts to revive its 2015 nuclear agreement and the growing poverty in the country after years of US sanctions, Iranian analysts see the vote turnout as a referendum on the leadership’s handling of a series of crises.

Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei said after voting in the capital Tehran: “Every vote is important… to vote for your president… This is important to the future of your country.”

National television shows that there are long lines outside polling stations in several cities.

State-related polls and analysts named the 60-year-old hardline judicial director Rethy as the front runner. If elected, Raisi would be the first serving Iranian president sanctioned by the US government even before entering office over his involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, as well as his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticised judiciary – one of the The world’s top executioner.

As negotiations in Vienna continue to try to save Tehran and the world’s major powers, this will also firmly control the hardliners of the Iranian government.

Former Central Bank Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati ran for the election as a moderate candidate, but did not receive the same support as the outgoing President Hassan Rouhani, who has a limited term and cannot run for another election.