Zee Media Bureau
Tehran: Iran`s Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar on Saturday announced that moderate candidate Hasan Rowhani has won the Presidential Election.
Addressing a press conference, Najjar said here that Rowhani garnered more than 50 percent of more than 36 million votes cast in Friday`s election.
Rowhani won 18,613,329 votes out of counted votes of 36,704,156, said Najjar, adding that the turnout rate in the Friday election was 72.2 percent.
He won the race with a wide lead, as his closest rival, Tehran`s Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, only won 16.58 percent of the votes.
Rowhani was the lone moderate candidate in the race supported by reformists in a race that once appeared solidly in the hands of Tehran`s ruling clerics.
Rowhani`s conservative and hard-line opponents were far behind the moderate cleric who has vowed to follow a policy of detente and interaction with the outside world.
At campaign rallies, Rowhani had pledged to seek "constructive interaction with the world" that includes efforts to ease Western concerns about Iran`s program and lift punishing international sanctions that have pummelled the economy.
The West and its allies fear Iran could be moving toward development of a nuclear weapon. Iranian officials, including Rowhani, insist that the country only seeks nuclear reactors for energy and medical applications.
(With Agency inputs)
