Hassan Rohani is Iran's new President. He defeated five conservatives (hardliners)/semi conservatives-independent convincingly with 51% of the votes. His closest rival, Qalibaf, managed to only get 16% of the votes. Jalili and Mohsen Rezaee are almost tied in the third place with 10-11%. Since one of the candidate have the majority of the votes, he won.
This is a stunning victory for the Reformists of Iran. I'm glad that they came together under a single candidate no matter how imperfect he was. Rohani is probably not the most ideal Reformists leader, but the body that selects Iran's Presidential candidate disqualified a lot of their candidates. After seeing today's result, I bet some members of the Guardian Council would be regretting their decision to eliminate Rafsanjani from the race. If they had only allowed Rafsanjani to run, he would've probably split the reformists vote between them. I don't think people like Rafsanjani can be persuaded to drop from a race or is win-able on a reformist ticket at least not in the current era. Most of his political life seems to be dedicated serving the establishment and he's also very wealthy. So, he has quite a bit of baggage.
Rezaee also did very well in this election. The supposedly front runner, Qalibaf, didn't deliver. The other establishment candidates were rejected by the Iranians.
Hassan Rohani will definitely face challenges from the unelected branch of government like the rest of other Presidents. But I hope he can improve the life of average Iranians and rein in the other side who think they represent the will of God. Hopefully, he can get many of the political prisoners out.
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