Iran International
With pro-reform Masoud Pezeshkian and ultra-hardliner Saeed Jalili in Iran's July 5 runoff, debates are heating up. Some advocate voting for Pezeshkian to prevent Jalili's win, while others consider boycotting the vote again.
“The unhappy, disillusioned majority made a powerful statement in this election. The boycotters turned the poll into a referendum against the Islamic Republic, while those who voted managed to thwart the political establishment’s plans to install their desired hardliner candidate in the presidential office in the first round,” said 52-year-old businessman Hamed in Tehran, who did not vote on Friday, in an interview with Iran International after the poll results were announced.
At least 60 percent of the 61.5 million eligible voters abstained from voting on Friday, according to official figures. However, many believe the turnout was even lower than reported, possibly as low as 20 percent, suggesting that over 80 percent of voters boycotted the election. Although it borders on a conspiracy theory, Persian social media is buzzing with posts about it.
As proof, they indicate that the votes of the four candidates, the number of void ballots, and the total are all multiples of three. “The probability that five random numbers are multiples of three is less than half a percent. The Islamic Republic has multiplied the votes by three,” one of the many tweets that have gone viral on X in the past 24 hours said.
“Some of my friends now argue that we have made our point. Turnout was the lowest in any presidential elections and the reformists must have also realized that we no longer trust them to go to the polls whenever they tell us. They say, given this, we should now vote in the run-off to stop Jalili’s presidency,” he said. "But there are also those who strongly disagree and say we need to take the boycott act to the next level."
Hamed had voted for reformists in every presidential and parliamentary election since the high turnout presidential vote in 1997, when reformist Mohammad Khatami won a landslide victory with 22 million votes (69 %). But he never voted after 2017 when he cast his vote for the moderate Hassan Rouhani whom Khatami had endorsed. Like many other Iranians, he now describes himself as a ‘barandaz’ (proponent of regime change) for the past few years.
This time his resolve to boycott the elections was weakened when Pezeshkian was allowed to run. “Could it be a signal that Khamenei had decided to open up the atmosphere only a little, we asked ourselves,” Hamed recalled.
“We know Pezeshkian’s powers as president would be very limited but there is still a big difference between him and a fundamentalist like Jalili or a corrupt to the bone politician like [Mohammad-Bagher] Ghalibaf,” Hamed added.
After long discussions with close acquaintances, family, and former university friends in WhatsApp and Telegram groups, he and several friends decided not to vote. They even visited a few polling stations on Friday to observe voter turnout. “The turnout was visibly low, even in the evening hours when more people usually go out to vote,” he noted.
“We could regret it later if we didn’t vote and let fundamentalists have an easy win but there came a text message from the interior ministry that said every vote was a vote for the "system" or regime, depending on how one would prefer to translate the Persian word. We didn’t want Khamenei to use our votes as proof of the legitimacy of his rule. So, we decided to go back home without voting,” Hamed said.
According to Hamed, the arguments within his circle of friends and family against voting centered on Pezeshkian's failure to address many of the key issues they, particularly women, expected him to address clearly in the debates. Most also believed that Pezeshkian would have minimal power, if any, to implement meaningful reforms if opposed by Khamenei and the hardline-dominated parliament.
The 34-year-old artist Samaneh spoke of similar arguments in her own circle of family and friends. She was very active in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests of 2022-23 and says she is a ‘barandaz’. “I don’t want to live under any religious rule, let alone one like this which has its arms up to the elbow in the blood of innocent protesters.”
Nevertheless, she decided to vote for Pezeshkian “only for a little improvement” and tried to convince her younger sister and brother who are in their twenties to do so. “Both of them refused. They didn’t even want to hear about it,” she said, adding that to her surprise the outcome of Friday’s poll had changed their minds.
“I can’t believe they are now going around trying to encourage their friends to vote on Friday. Even the thought of Jalili destroying the little that has remained of the economy and social freedoms scares them to death,” Samaneh said.
Arguments like those of Hamed, Samaneh, and their family and friends abound on social media. “Pezeshkian won’t help you overthrow the regime but Jalili can lead us to become North Korea,” Hanieh who indicated that she is a ‘barandaz’ argued in a tweet against those who questioned her motivation for voting and encouragement of others to vote.
Tababaei, who according to her profile is a dentist living between Tehran and London in a short tweet with images of Jalili and Pezeshkian said the choice for her was easy: “It is Iran vs. a branch of the Taliban of Afghanistan.”
