After Iran’s June 28 presidential election saw the lowest turnout in history, Pezeshkian won 16.3 million votes against hard-liner Saeed Jalili’s 13.5 million votes to clinch Friday’s runoff election. Pezeshkian now must convince a public angered by years of economic pain and bloody crackdowns that he can make the changes he promised. “We are losing our backing in the society, because of our behavior, high prices, our treatment of girls and because we censor the internet,” Pezeshkian said at a televised debate Monday night. “People are discontent with us because of our behavior.”Pezeshkian has aligned himself with other moderate and reformist figures during his campaign to replace the late Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line protégé of Khamenei killed in a helicopter crash in May.
