Hommam Al Nassim 
On Saturday, the Iranian Election Authority announced the organization of a second round of presidential elections on July 5 after no candidate was able to obtain 50% of the votes in the first round.
Mohsen Islami, spokesman for the Elections Committee at the Ministry of Interior, stated that no candidate achieved an absolute majority of the votes, which necessitated organizing a runoff between the first and second candidates.
Islami explained that the two candidates qualified for the second round are the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, who received about 42.11% of the votes, and the extremist Saeed Jalili, who received about 38.3% of the votes.
The turnout rate in the first round of the presidential elections was 40%.
The second round will take place on July 5, where Pezeshkian and Jalili will compete to determine the winner of the presidency.
This event brings to mind the only previous runoff round in the history of Iranian presidential elections, which took place in 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Iranian law requires that the winner obtain more than 50% of the total votes cast. If this does not happen, the two candidates who received the most votes will go into a runoff a week after the first round.
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