Kitaneh Fitzpatrick, Andie Parry, Katherine Wells, Siddhant Kishore, Kathryn Tyson, Johanna Moore, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

Iranian reformist presidential candidate Masoud Pezeshkian appears to be gaining momentum ahead of the runoff presidential elections on July 2. Several recent polls demonstrate that Pezeshkian is maintaining his lead over hardline candidate Saeed Jalili. Pezeshkian received 10.4 million votes and Jalili received around 9.5 million during the first round of elections on June 28. Former presidential candidate and pragmatic hardliner Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s campaign head Sami Nazari Tarkarani also endorsed Pezeshkian on July 2. This endorsement may divert some of 3.4 million votes Ghalibaf received during the first round of elections to Pezeshkian, thus advantaging Pezeshkian. Pezeshkian also performed strongly in a July 1 economic debate against Jalili. Members of Jalili’s own faction criticized Jalili’s poor performance, in contrast. Details on this debate are included in the following paragraphs.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei must determine if he will permit Pezeshkian to win the election if Pezeshkian maintains his lead over Jalili. Khamenei expressed foreign and nuclear policy views on June 25 that closely align with ultraconservative hardline presidential candidate Saeed Jalili’s views, suggesting that Khamenei endorses Jalili. Khamenei also indirectly criticized Pezeshkian’s campaign policies on the same date. This suggests that Khamenei may decide to prevent Pezeshkian from becoming president. Raisi’s 2021 election suggests that Khamenei is comfortable engineering elections to advantage his preferred candidate. The Guardian Council denied the candidacies of several prominent politicians in the 2021 elections and Raisi therefore faced no significant competition in the race.

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iranian reformist presidential candidate Masoud Pezeshkian appears to be gaining momentum ahead of the runoff presidential elections on July 2. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei must determine if he will permit Pezeshkian to win the election if Pezeshkian maintains his lead over Jalili. Khamenei would risk further deteriorating regime legitimacy and possibly kickstarting unrest if Pezeshkian garners increased support in the coming days and Khamenei decides to undermine Pezeshkian’s ability to win the election.

• Lebanon: A senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is attempting to publicly discourage US support for a major Israeli military offensive into Lebanon.

• Gaza Strip: Several current and former Israeli security officials told the New York Times that top Israeli generals disagree with political establishment’s war goals in the Gaza Strip. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari implied on June 19 that the IDF thinks the Israeli prime minister’s goal of destroying Hamas is not an achievable goal and that those advocated the goal are ”misleading the Israeli people.”

• Yemen: The Houthis claimed on July 1 that it conducted four ballistic and cruise missile attacks targeting four commercial vessels in the Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. CTP-ISW cannot verify that these attacks occurred. 

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ISW–CTP has launched an interactive map of Israeli ground operations to accompany our daily campaign assessments of the Israel–Hamas war. This product complements the daily static maps that ISW-CTP produces with high-fidelity and, where possible, street-level assessments of the war in Israel.

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