ALBAWABA - As Iran braces to face the upcoming runoff election round on Friday, the late president's family announced endorsing ultraconservative candidate Saeed Jalili for the presidency.
Jalili is renowned for managing Iran's nuclear negotiations as Iran's unyielding lead negotiator from 2007 to 2012. He is currently a member of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and one of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's direct delegates.
Being a conservative hardliner, a ruling style very similar to the late President Ebrahim Raisi. His membership in the SNSC enabled him to run what he dubbed a "shadow government" throughout the moderate Hassan Rouhani's tenure from 2013 to 2021.
Jalili opposed the nuclear deal with the West in 2015 and would most certainly be hesitant to accede to Western demands to revive it if elected president. He has, however, vowed to lower inflation swiftly, albeit failing to specify how he intends to do so.
As the country prepares for Jalili and Pezeshkian to face off, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, urged voters to cast ballots in Friday's presidential runoff election, stating that the historically low participation in the first round was not a sign of someone acting "against the system".
The first round of the Iranian presidential election had the lowest voter participation since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, with just 40% of the country's 61 million registered voters casting votes.
In a video shown by state television, Khamenei stated that it was "completely wrong to think that those who did not vote in the first round are against the system".
Pezeshkian won 42.4 percent of the votes, while Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, came second with 38.6 percent.
A runoff round has been scheduled on Friday as none of the candidates received more than 50% of the total votes. "The second round of the presidential election is very important," Khamenei stated.
