THE IS CRYING The message of change could not be clearer. In the July 5 presidential election, 16.4 million Iranians voted for Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist heart surgeon who wants negotiations with the West and women’s right to dress as they wish. Only 13.5 million Iranians voted for Saeed Jalili, a hardliner who advocates confronting Western “enemies,” enforcing Iran’s conservative codes, and preserving the system as it is. Even regime loyalists doubted his message. Mr. Jalili received 8 million fewer votes than the two hardliners who ran for president in 2021.
In heated televised debates, Mr Pezeshkian called for negotiations with America that could lift sanctions and rescue Iran from its “cage”.Iran is a poor country” (“Iran is not in a cage” in Farsi), Mr. Jalili retorted, insisting that the missiles that Iran and its proxies fired at Israel proved that it had already broken free. Their opposing visions sparked fierce debates in the streets over whether to boycott a theocratic system or vote to stem the tide of Talibanization and the escalation of tensions with the West expected under Mr. Jalili. In the end, Iranians did both. They voted in sufficient numbers to elect a reformer. (Mr. Pezeshkian received 8 million more votes in the runoff than in the first.) But — with just under 50 percent of the electorate turning out to vote — Iranians still sent a message that they have lost faith in the system. “Those who voted (for Mr Pezeshktian) or did not vote were a team driven by civil disobedience,” Farhad Meysami, a former political prisoner, said in a message widely shared on social media.
