A tweet from the chief editor of the website of state-owned Press TV:
With the polls closed, we are also now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again tomorrow morning to follow all the latest developments.
Good morning. The first results are in:
Iranian President Hassan Rohani leads the field of candidates in Iran's presidential election in the first official results released on May 20.
With over 25 million counted so far, Rohani was in the lead with over 14.6 million votes, compared with 10 million for his chief hard-line rival Ebrahim Raisi. The other two candidates did not break through the 1 million mark.
Final results expected by the afternoon, according to this tweet.
According to the Interior Ministry's first official count, translated by Radio Farda.
From the 25,966,729 votes counted, there were 25,182,310 valid votes. This brings the preliminary result to:
14,619,848 Hassan Rohani
10,125,855 Ebrahim Raisi
297,276 Mostafa Mirsalim
139,331 Mostafa Hashemi Taba
Total votes are around 42 million, the final result to be announced Saturday afternoon (around 2 p.m. local time).
Election chief Ali Asghar Ahmadi announcing the preliminary results on state channel IRIB:
Votes being counted in the U.S. Reports appeared to suggest that many Iranians voted outside the country.
It's still very early, and final figures could eventually vary significantly from what we're seeing now, but some folks are already turning their attention to the true prize on the Iranian political scene, the supreme leader's post. That person, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 77 and said to be in flagging health, and Raisi has been whispered to be a contender to succeed him in the future.
So what would a trouncing in this election mean for Raisi's potential bid to become supreme leader?
Here's one answer: