The preliminary results are out in Iran’s presidential election, giving ex-health minister Masoud Pezeshkian a slight lead over former lead nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Mohsen Eslami, spokesperson for Iran’s election headquarters, announced the results on Saturday.
The results gave Pezeshkian as many as 5,000,354 votes and Jalili 4,875,269.
Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iranian Parliament speaker, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi, former interior minister, the two other candidates in the race, trailed far behind with respectively 1,620,628 and 95,172 votes each.
The polls closed at midnight local time on Saturday (20:30 GMT on Friday), ending a 16-hour-long voting process.
The election was called after President Ebrahim Raeisi was martyred along with seven others on May 19, when the helicopter carrying them crashed in northwestern Iran.
More than 61 million Iranians have been eligible to vote in the election.
