Moderate reformist politician Masoud Pezeshkian wins Iran’s presidential race

After the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, Iranian lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian wrote that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family”.

Days later, as nationwide protests and a bloody crackdown on all dissent took hold, he warned that those “insulting the supreme leader … will create nothing except long-lasting anger and hatred in the society".

The stances by Mr Pezeshkian, now Iran's 69-year-old president-elect, highlight the dualities of being a reformist politician within Iran's Shiite theocracy – always pushing for change but never radically challenging the system overseen by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s interior ministry said on Saturday: “By gaining majority of the votes cast on Friday, Pezeshkian has become Iran’s next president.”

After Iran's 28 June presidential election saw the lowest turnout in history, Mr Pezeshkian won 16.3 million votes against hard-liner Saeed Jalili 's 13.5 million votes to clinch Friday's runoff election. Mr 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," Mr Pezeshkian said at a televised debate Monday night. “People are discontent with us because of our behavior.”

Mr Pezeshkian has aligned himself with other moderate and reformist figures during his campaign to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line protégé of Khamenei killed in a helicopter crash in May. His main advocate has been former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who reached Iran's 2015 nuclear