Iran elects Ebrahim Raisi as new president

Seyed Ebrahim Raisi will be new president of Iran. According to state media, his main opponent has coceded his defeat on Saturday. Iran’s hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi, the conservative head of the judiciary, has taken an unassailable lead in the presidential election after 90 percent of the votes were counted, the interior ministry said on Saturday. 

Earlier, in the day three out of four candidates in the fray conceded defeat to Raisi, a protégé of Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei who was widely seen as the frontrunner in Friday’s election marred by low turnout and the disqualification of many candidates. Raisi, 60, received more than 17.8 million out of the 28.6 million votes that have been counted, the interior ministry said, based on preliminary results. Hardliner Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, received more than 3.3 million votes.

The new president will take office in August as Iran seeks to salvage its tattered nuclear deal with major powers and free itself from punishing US sanctions that have driven a sharp economic downturn. Iranian diplomats have been engaged in talks to revive the deal in the Austrian capital Vienna. In a statement, outgoing President Hassan Rouhani congratulated the people of Iran and the supreme leader for an “epic and rare presence” in the elections, saying “your glorious and enemy-breaking participation led to the remorse and dejection of enemies and those who wish ill on this nation”.