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DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES —Iran held a runoff presidential election Friday pitting a former nuclear negotiator against a former health minister, though both men earlier struggled to persuade a skeptical public to cast ballots in the first round that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting took place, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
Online videos, however, purported to show some polls empty, while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
Polls closed after midnight, after voting was extended, as had become tradition in Iran. Iranian state TV said initial results were expected Saturday.
Khamenei has insisted the low turnout from the first round on June 28 didn't represent a referendum on Iran's Shiite theocracy. However, many remain disillusioned as Iran has been beset by years under crushing economic sanctions, bloody security force crackdowns on mass protests and tensions with the West over Tehran's advancing nuclear program enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
"I want to save the country from isolation we are stuck in, and from lies and the violence against women because Iranian women don't deserve to be beaten up and insulted on the street by extremists who want to destroy the country by cutting ties with big countries," voter Ghazaal Bakhtiari said. "We should have ties with America and powerful nations."
The race pits former negotiator Saeed Jalili against former Health Minister Masoud Pezeshkian.
Jalili has had a recalcitrant reputation among Western diplomats during negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, something that is paired with concern at home over his hard-line views on Iran's mandatory headscarf, or hijab. Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, has campaigned on relaxing hijab enforcement and reaching out to the West, though he too for decades has supported Khamenei and Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Pezeshkian's supporters have been warning Jalili will bring a "Taliban"-style government into Tehran, while Jalili has criticized Pezeshkian for running a campaign of fearmongering.
Both contenders voted Friday in southern Tehran, home to many poor neighborhoods. Though Pezeshkian came out on top in the first round of voting, Jalili has been trying to secure the votes of people who supported hard-line parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who came in third and later endorsed the former negotiator.
Pezeshkian offered no comments after voting, walking out with former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who reached Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. A rambunctious crowd surrounded the men, shouting: "The nation's hope comes!"
Jalili voted at another poll, surrounded by a crowd shouting: "Raisi, your way continues!" Both men hope to replace the 63-year-old late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country's foreign minister and others.
"Today the entire world admits that it's the people who decide who's president for the next four years," Jalili said afterward. "This is your right to decide which person, which path and which approach should rule the country in the next four years."
But as has been the case since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and those calling for radical change have been barred from the ballot while the vote itself will have no oversight from internationally recognized monitors. The country's Interior Ministry, in charge of police, oversees the result.