TEHRAN -- Iran will hold a runoff presidential election on July 5 after Friday’s vote saw none of the four candidates securing an outright win, the election headquarters announced on Saturday.
Mohsen Eslami, the spokesperson for the country’s election headquarters, announced the result at a news conference following the announcement of the final vote count.
He said of 24.5 million votes cast, former health minister and senior lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian got 10.4 million while former lead nuclear negotiator and chief of the top security body Saeed Jalili received 9.4 million.
The other two hopefuls – parliament speaker Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf and former interior affairs minister Mostafa Pourmuhammadi – trailed behind at 3.3 million and over 206,000 respectively. 
Pezeshkian and Jalili will head into a runoff set for July 5. The second round is required if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, plus one.
Qalibaf quickly endorsed Jalili in conceding the result and criticized Pezeshkian for allying himself with former president Hassan Rouhani and his former foreign minister, Muhammad Javad Zarif. The two reached Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which later collapsed after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord.
“The road is not over yet, and despite the fact that I respect Mr. Dr. Pezeshkian personally, ... I ask all the revolutionary forces and my supporters to help stop the wave that is causing an important part of our economic and political problems today,” Qalibaf said in a statement.
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the government is ready to hold the runoff election as he hailed the Iranian people and election authorities for holding the polls without any incident.   
“Once again, in the past few months, we were able to achieve another success together. The elections were held with complete safety and soundness, serious competition and valuable turnout of people at the polling stations,” he told reporters after the final vote count.  
 “I hope ... we will see vigorous elections throughout the country on Friday,” he added.
The two candidates are allowed to begin their election campaign from Sunday until Wednesday, Vahidi said. Campaigning has to stop 24 hours before the vote.  
The snap election is held to choose a successor to President Ebrahim Raisi who lost his life in the May 19 helicopter crash along with the country’s foreign minister and others.
Voting was extended three times on

 Friday, each time by two hours, after 6:00 p.m. local time when the polling was supposed to close as per the Constitutional requirement of a 10-hour voting period.  
The voting lines finally closed at midnight after which the vote counting began at thousands of polling stations scattered across the country, including more than 6,000 in the capital Tehran.
The voting on Friday followed weeks of intense campaigning, including field events, televised debates, and roundtable discussions in which the six candidates approved by the Constitutional Council, the country’s top election supervisory body, presented their blueprints and strategies.
As Election Day approached, two presidential candidates dropped out of the race to build consensus around one candidate.
Iranian nationals living abroad, from New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Zagreb, Najaf, Stockholm, Dhaka, Rome, and Vienna to Brussels, and numerous other locations, exercised their voting rights.
In some Western capitals, such as London, anti-Iran elements affiliated with the MKO terror cult tried to disrupt the election process and intimidate voters, but the voting continued uninterrupted.
 In a post on his X account on Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said the enthusiastic turnout of Iranian nationals living abroad in the election “once again showed patriotism and love for dear Iran.”
He added that all Iranians will “once again and in a new test” stand together with unity in the runoff election to improve the country’s dignity.
The spokesman reiterated that all proud Iranians anywhere in the country and the world will come to the polls on Friday.