Polls close and vote counting begins in Iran presidential election

Polls have closed in Iran's snap presidential election and counting of votes has begun at thousands of polling stations across the country.

The polls closed at midnight local time on Saturday (20:30 GMT on Friday), ending a 16-hour-long voting process.

The voting had begun across 58,000 stations inside the country at 08:00 a.m. local time.

The process was initially scheduled to last for 10 hours but was extended thrice owing to lively and passionate popular participation in the electoral procedure.

With the end of the official voting procedure, the polling stations stopped receiving any new voters, and sufficed to serving those, who had already turned up at the stations to cast their ballots.

Simultaneously with the electoral procedure inside the country, as many as 314 polling stations have been serving Iranian expatriates throughout more than 100 foreign countries.

The election was called after President Ebrahim Raeisi was martyred along with seven others on May 19, when the helicopter carrying them crashed in northwestern Iran.

Following Raeisi’s martyrdom, Vice President Mohammad Mokhber was tasked with running the country’s executive affairs.

More than 61 million Iranians have been eligible to vote in the election, contested by Saeed Jalili, a former lead nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iranian Parliament speaker, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, former interior minister, and Masoud Pezeshkian, former health minister.

Iran’s Election Office, meanwhile, announced in a statement that the candidates’ official representatives were allowed to attend the polling stations and remain there until the conclusion of the vote counting process, while refraining from interference in underway administrative and supervisory procedures.