TEHRAN -- Outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday met and held talks with President-elect Ebrahim Raisi ahead of the official transition of power in the Islamic Republic on August 3.
Raisi went to the presidential office in Pasteur Street in central Tehran to meet Rouhani, deputy head of the Iranian president’s office for communications Alireza Moezzi tweeted.
“The transition of power is proceeding in a professional, civil and ethical manner,” he wrote.
It was the second meeting with Rouhani since Raisi won a landslide victory in the June 18 presidential election.
The first meeting was held on Saturday, only hours after Raisi took an unassailable lead in presidential election count.
On Sunday, Rouhani directed his cabinet’s economic coordination committee to provide a report on the country’s economic status to the president-elect.
Rouhani asked the board of directors to report to the president-elect on the state of the country’s economy and the measures adopted by his administration.
At a presser on Saturday, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli said out of a total of 28,933,004 votes cast in the presidential election, Raisi garnered over 17.9 million votes, followed by Mohsen Rezaei who secured 3.4 million.
Nasser Hemmati received 2.4 million votes, and Amir-Hussein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi won about one million votes.
In his first news conference on Monday, Raisi said the U.S. must remove the sanctions in a verifiable way in order for Tehran to reverse the nuclear steps it took in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
Raisi said any negotiation that secures Iran’s national interests will be supported by his administration, but “we will not tie the economic situation and people’s livelihood to these negotiations and we will not allow talks for the sake of talks.”
Raeisi also pledged to bring back the lost public trust in the administration, saying he will try to bring hope to the people.
His administration, he said, will not be limited to a specific political party or group, pledging that he will be open to any governmental manager who is a patriot and wants to serve the people and the Islamic Revolution.
“Anyone whose heart beats for the people and the Revolution will be our partner everywhere in the country,” he said.