DUBAI: Over 20 years ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stood before a crowd at Friday prayers to denounce the United States for its disenchanted electorate.
“It is disgraceful for a nation to have a 35 percent or 40 percent voter turnout, as happens in some of the nations that you see having presidential elections,” Khamenei said in 2001. “It is obvious that their people do not trust their political system, that they do not care about it and that they have no hope.”
Iran now faces what the ayatollah described.
Iran will hold a runoff presidential election Friday, only its second since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after only 39.9 percent of its voting public cast a ballot the previous week. Of over 24.5 million votes, more than 1 million ballots were later rejected — typically a sign of people feeling obligated to head to the polls but wanting to reject all the candidates.
Meanwhile, public rage simmers after years of Iran’s economy cratering to new lows, along with bloody crackdowns on dissent, including over the mass protests sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini after her detention by the country’s morality police allegedly over not wearing her headscarf to their liking. Tensions with the West remain high as Iran enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
Now, hardline former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili faces the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who likely needs a widespread turnout to win the presidency. Pezeshkian’s supporters warn of dark days ahead under Jalili. Meanwhile, many people are unconvinced that their vote even matters.
“I did not vote and I will not, since nobody apologized because of Mahsa and later miseries that young people face, neither the reformists nor the hard-liners,” said Leila Seyyedi, a 23-year-old university student studying graphic design.
Iranian election law requires a candidate to get over 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. In results released Saturday, Pezeshkian got 10.4 million votes while Jalili received 9.4 million. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf came in third with 3.3 million, while Shiite cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi had over 206,000.
Most voters for Qalibaf, a former general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and national police chief known for his crackdowns against students and for corruption allegations, likely will break for Jalili after Qalibaf endorsed him, analysts say. That has put Jalili, a 58-year-old known as the “Living Martyr” for losing a leg in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, in the lead position for the runoff.
But his recalcitrant reputation among Western diplomats during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program is paired with concern at home over his views. One politician who has aligned himself with the moderates, former Iranian Information and Communications Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, put the choice between Jalili and Pezeshkian more starkly.
“We will not let Iran fall into the hands of the Taliban,” he wrote on social platform X.
But even such dark warnings seemingly failed to have an effect. On the streets of Tehran after the June 28 vote, many said they didn’t care about the election.
“I did not vote, as former presidents failed to realize their promises,” said Ahmad Taheri, a 27-year-old psychology student. “I will not vote this coming Friday either.”
Mohammad Ali Robati, a 43-year-old electronic engineer and a father of two, said Iranian officials’ apparent indifference to people’s economic pressures caused him not to vote.
“After years of economic difficulties, I have no interest in politics,” Robati said, though he held out the possibility of voting Friday.
At the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the exchange rate for Iran’s currency was 32,000 rials to $1. Today, it’s 617,000 rials to $1 — and many have found the value of their bank accounts, retirement funds and other holdings gouged by years of depreciation. It’s nearing its record low of 700,000 rials, briefly reached after Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israel in April.
Meanwhile, anger over Amini’s death in September 2022 persists. Her death, in which United Nations investigators said Iran’s government was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to it, sparked months of protests and a security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained. Less than two years later, hard-liners within Iran’s theocracy have pressed forward with a renewed hijab crackdown.
“The voter participation levels and blank ballots represented a repudiation of regime policies, particularly its crackdown on critics and women who refuse to comply with laws requiring full head covering,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said in an analysis Monday.
Pezeshkian has written on X that his government would resist the police enforcement of the hijab along with restrictions on the Internet. However, Tahereh Namazi, a 31-year-old mathematics teacher, said she didn’t vote because neither candidate made a clear pledge on those issues.
Those who didn’t vote and spoke to the AP described their decision as their own, not part of an organized boycott.
Whether voters heed Pezeshkian on Friday remains in question. In recent days, he has repeatedly cited the story of the “selfless farmer,” a tale told to nearly every Iranian child at school about a farmer in 1961 who stripped off his own shirt and set it ablaze to warn a train about boulders blocking the tracks.
Those not taking part in the election believe the train has already crashed.

Tehran: Iranian artist Mohammad Hossein Aghamiri sometimes labors for six months on a single design, very carefully — he knows a single crooked line could ruin his entire artwork.
In the age of AI-assisted graphic design on computer screens, the centuries-old tradition of Persian illumination offers an antidote to rushing the creative process.
Aghamiri’s fine brush moves natural pigments onto the paper with deliberate precision as he creates intricate floral patterns, religious motifs and elegantly flowing calligraphy.
The exquisite artwork has for centuries embellished literary manuscripts, religious texts and royal edicts as well as many business contracts and marriage certificates.
Aghamiri, 51, is one of Iran’s dozen or so remaining masters of the ancient illumination art of Tazhib, which was inscribed last year on UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage.
“It is a very unique job that requires a lot of patience and precision,” Aghamiri, a veteran of the craft with over 30 years’ experience, told AFP in his downtown Tehran studio.
“It’s not accessible to everyone.”
Tazhib’s non-figurative and geometric flourishes have traditionally adorned the margins of holy books and epic poems.
The artform dates back to the Sassanid era in pre-Islamic Iran but flourished after the seventh century advent of Islam, which banned human depictions.
Aghamiri says it often takes him months to finish one design and that a single misplaced stroke that disrupts its symmetrical harmony can force him to start over.
When AFP visited, he was working on a so-called shamsa design, a symbolic representation of the sun, about 50 centimeters across with intertwined abstract, geometric and floral patterns.
He said he started the piece over four months ago and aimed to finish it within six weeks, using natural pigments such as lapis lazuli, saffron, gouache and pure gold, from China.
“Gold has a very strong visual appeal,” said Aghamiri. “It’s expensive and it enhances the perceived value of the work.”
Aghamiri hails from a family of artists and artisans with a rich history in Iranian craft traditions including calligraphy, miniature painting and carpet design.
His work has been showcased in museums in Iran and in nearby Arab countries of the Gulf region where interest in Oriental and Islamic art continues to grow.
“Eighty percent of my works are sold in the region, especially in the Emirates and Qatar” as well as in Turkiye, he said.
In recent years, Aghamiri garnered interest abroad and even began teaching the ancient art online to students from across the world, notably the United States.
Soon, he also hopes to hold workshops in Britain for his craft, which he says is fundamentally different from European illumination art, which flourished in the Middle Ages.
European designs, he said, are more figurative and can depict human faces, animals and landscapes, and often illustrate biblical scenes.
UNESCO labelled the Persian art of illumination as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2023, at the request of Iran as well as Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
“Twenty years ago, I didn’t have much hope” for the future of Persian illumination, said Aghamiri. “But things have changed, and I see that this art is becoming more and more popular.”