Iranian reformist presidential candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, center, waves outside a polling station during the presidential election in Tehran on Friday and obtained 42.5% of votes. Photo by EPA-EFE

Pezeshkian secured 42.5% of votes to Jalili’s 38.6% during the election that drew participation from only 40% of the nation’s 60 million eligible voters in Friday’s election.

With only 24 million ballots cast, the election was the lowest voter turnout to elect a president since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979.

Iran’s 12-member Guardian Council will review the election results before the remaining two candidates can resume campaigning.

The election is to replace former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19 along with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and others.

Acting Iranian President Mohammad Mokhber did not run for office in the election.

Iran’s Guardian Council reduced a long list of potential candidates to just six for Friday’s election.

Five of those running were hard-line conservatives versus just one reformist candidate.

Two of the conservative candidates withdrew from contention in an effort to build majority support for one of the other hard-line candidates.

Jalili, 58, is a former nuclear negotiator known for his strongly anti-Western views and lost a leg during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

Pezeshkian, 69, is the oldest candidate and said he wants to engage nation’s outside of Iran and the Middle East to improve the nation’s economy.

Iranian hard-liners want to maintain their political control of the nation and its highest office, which critics say the Guardian Council aided with five conservative candidates to one reformist.

Regardless of who wins the presidential election, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, remains Iran’s supreme ruler.