Iran’s supreme leader opened a presidential election Friday in which ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi is seen as all but certain to coast to victory over his vetted rivals.
The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cast the first ballot in Tehran and then urged Iran’s nearly 60 million eligible voters to follow suit before polls are set to close at midnight.
“The sooner you perform this task and duty , the better,” the 81-year-old Khamenei said. “ Everything that the iranian people do today until tonight, by going to the polls and voting, serves to build their future.”
After a lacklustre campaign, turnout is expected to plummet to a new low in a country exhausted by a punishing regime of US economic sanctions that dashed hopes for a brighter future.
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