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Iran's interior minister said President Hassan Rohani -- seen casting his ballot on May 19 -- won reelection with around 57 percent of the vote, easily avoiding a runoff.
Iran's interior minister said President Hassan Rohani -- seen casting his ballot on May 19 -- won reelection with around 57 percent of the vote, easily avoiding a runoff.

Live Blog: Rohani Declared Winner Of Iran Vote

Updated

-- Iranian officials have declared President Hassan Rohani winner of the May 19 vote with around 57 percent of ballots, easily avoiding a runoff against conservative former prosecutor Ebrahim Raisi, who was said to have received about 38.5 percent of votes cast.

-- In a victory speech, Rohani said the Iranian people were the "real victors" of the election and that Iran had chosen "engagement with the world" in voting for him, rejecting extremism. But as Rohani knows very well, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds ultimate political, military, and religious power in Iran, and can easily derail a campaign or thwart the plans of a president.

-- Six men were approved to run by the Guardians Council from more than 1,600 applicants, but it quickly boiled down to a two-man race between Raisi and Rohani, an establishment veteran who oversaw a breakthrough nuclear deal with world powers to ease sanctions and pushed for engagement with the West and greater openness for Iranians.

-- Raisi has long been talked about as a possible successor to Khamenei, and it's unclear what effect a landslide loss might have on his political ambitions.

*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Tehran (GMT +4 1/2)

17:53 19.5.2017

Pretty rousing tune, this:

17:46 19.5.2017

Here's a video of ex-pats voting that has been shared by the state-owned channel Press TV:

17:43 19.5.2017

Some analysis:

Speaking of analysis, David Patrikarakos has written this piece for RFE/RL on the possible ramifications of Iran's election:

Iran's Younger Generation Positioned To Restore Political Roar

An Iranian opposition protester faces security forces during clashes in Tehran in December 2009, following the reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president.
An Iranian opposition protester faces security forces during clashes in Tehran in December 2009, following the reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president.

When Mahmud Ahmadinejad was elected to a second term as president in 2009 as a result of what is widely regarded as vote-rigging, Iran's younger generation played a leading role in the massive street protests that ensued and gave birth to the opposition Green Movement.

Iran's rulers were shaken. For the first time since the days of the shah, Iranians screamed "death to the dictator!" from Tehran's rooftops. Iran's youth were energized -- and angry.

It was Iran's younger generation (60 percent of the country's population is under the age of 30) that was at the heart of the Green Movement, and it was that generation's political spirit that the government sought to crush. The heavy-handed clampdown -- forever seared into memory by the shooting death of 26-year-old philosophy student and protester Neda Agha Soltan -- eventually muted the mass street demonstrations, jailed the moderate opposition's most ardent supporters and leaders, and allowed the establishment to continue on almost as before.

For Iran's young, however, it was a different story. Bereft of morale or leadership, they became increasingly apolitical under the second term of the virulently anti-Western Ahmadinejad and watched -- almost helplessly -- as their country became more isolated and more mistrusted and more extreme.

It was a source of depression for many Iranians, but an interesting thing happened: as young people became increasingly disenfranchised from politics, they poured their energies into other areas. Recent years have witnessed an explosion of creativity in art, music and, above all, theater.

As Ahmadinejad railed against the West, Iranian youth sculpted and painted and wrote. As he refused to negotiate over Iran's nuclear program, they directed plays and made underground documentaries. They created an oasis of culture in a political desert.

Past Leaves Opening For Future

Iran has always been autocratic -- the 1979 Islamic Revolution merely replaced shahs with clerics. Presidential elections in Iran are essentially a tiny democratic tick on an otherwise dictatorial body politic.

But in its short life the country's 1905-11 Constitutional Revolution provided a lasting foundation for a parliament and other hallmarks of democracy that could not be abandoned decades later by the founders of the Islamic republic.

Preeminent among the lasting democratic ideas was the holding of elections -- prime-ministerial (and later presidential) polls every four years, and parliamentary every two years. Iran's revolutionaries preserved this tradition as they recalibrated the state and rewrote the constitution to suit their new, Islamic, republic.

The new model features the election of presidents -- whose power pales in comparison to that of the supreme leader but who have significant influence on domestic and foreign policy and serve as the face of the nation abroad -- but this doesn't mean that they emerge from a democratic exercise.

Read the entire article here.

17:38 19.5.2017

16:58 19.5.2017

People are still waiting to vote in Tehran:

16:36 19.5.2017

A polling station in Chicago:

16:21 19.5.2017

Iranians voting in California:

16:13 19.5.2017

Iranians voting in Cambridge:

16:07 19.5.2017

Son of Iranian opposition figure, reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi, says his father who has been under house arrest since 2011, has voted. Karrubi has endorsed Hassan Rohani.

15:59 19.5.2017

More pictures of prisoners voting at the Evin prison:

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