Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wins re-election in victory for moderates

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani handily won re-election in what amounts to a victory for the Shiite nation’s reformist camp and a sign that citizens favor fruitful engagement with the outside world.

“I humbly bow my head down to you,” Rouhani said to his people in a tweet translated from Farsi. “I will remain loyal to my promise to you.”

Rouhani, who defeated his conservative challenger Ebrahim Raisi in the Friday elections, garnered 57% of the vote, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said. He’ll serve another four years in the post.

“This hope with which you’ve entrusted me, I do feel the weight of this responsibility,” Rouhani said in a televised address Saturday, “and I do pray to God to be a worthy carrier of your hopes and your dreams.”

In his remarks, he passed along his gratitude to his “good dear and close friend” former President Mohammed Khatami, a reformist figure who is popular among more liberal Iranians. Rouhani also remembered fondly the late statesman Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as a man of “reconstruction and progress.”

“His place among us in this morning of victory is quite empty,” Rouhani said of Rafsanjani.

Rouhani, a moderate, was a key architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States, the European Union and other partners, and his first term was marked by an emergent international outreach.

The agreement has been controversial in both the United States and Iran, and it emerged as a top campaign issue, with the election seen in part as a referendum on the deal.

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