Reformist, ultraconservative lead Iran presidential vote

Tehran: Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and ultraconservative Saeed Jalili are leading in Iran s presidential election, according to early resul...

Tehran: Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and ultraconservative Saeed Jalili are leading in Iran's presidential election, according to early results on Saturday from the Interior Ministry.

According to the latest count, Pezeshkian has won more than 8,300,000 votes and Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, has above 7,100,000

Should the current trend continue, both candidates would head into a runoff set for July 5. The second round is required if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, plus one.

The Interior Ministry reported that more than 19,000,000 ballots had been counted so far.

Coming third in the early results is the conservative speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with 2,600,000 votes.