Crypto News: A tough runoff for Iran’s reformist

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Iran's snap presidential election will head into a second round on Friday with the only reformist candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, facing off against hard line anti-Westerner Saeed Jalili.

Turnout for last week's first round was a record low for the third consecutive time in a major political ballot, reinforcing the idea that the Islamic Republic and its ruler — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — face a crisis of legitimacy.

But the fact that Pezeshkian fielded about one million more votes than Jalili suggests people are still holding on to hope that a reformist president will be good for the economy and embrace talks with the US to secure sanctions relief.

WATCH: Iran's presidential race will go to a runoff on July 5. Bloomberg's Dana Khraiche reports. Source: Bloomberg

The 69-year-old Pezeshkian is in for a tough fight. Already, the third-ranking candidate has instructed his supporters to back Jalili in the runoff. The other contenders, all hard liners, are very likely to do the same.

That means Pezeshkian will have to work hard to convince the massive number of voters who shunned the ballot box in the first round. His campaign supporters, including former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and ex-President Hassan Rouhani, have been using social media to try to reach out to the electorate.

But to many, particularly younger Iranians whose uprising was violently suppressed in 2022, Zarif and Rouhani are just as unpopular as men like Jalili who want to keep Iran isolated from the West.

On matters of foreign policy, for instance, the Supreme Leader still has the final say, and given that key Iranian allies Hamas and Hezbollah are embroiled in conflicts with Israel, a Pezeshkian presidency won't find much of an audience for any plans that call for a softer approach to the US.

In any case, the outcome will be watched closely in France, the UK and the US — embroiled in their own elections — because of the implications for Iran's nuclear program.

Whatever happens on Friday, Khamenei and the religious establishment that vets and organizes elections will be able to claim the runoff showed it was both heavily contested and offered a choice. That strategy may just be storing up trouble for the future. — Golnar Motevalli

Iran's Supreme Leader at a polling station in Tehran on June 28. Photographer: Shadati/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

After Marine Le Pen's National Rally dominated yesterday's first round of voting in France's legislative election, President Emmanuel Macron's centrist alliance and the leftist New Popular Front are weighing their strategies for the second round in a week's time to prevent Le Pen's party and its allies from winning a majority in parliament. Traditionally, France's mainstream has banded together to keep the far right — which has never held power in the modern French republic — out of government.

Opinion polls in Britain are still pointing to a crushing defeat for the governing Conservatives after 14 years in power as the election campaign enters its final days. While support for Labour slipped below 40% in two surveys, the Tories remained stuck at around 21%, putting opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer on track to enter Downing Street after Thursday's vote with a majority bigger than Tony Blair won in 1997.

The Chinese Communist Party's top ranks gather this month for one of the country's biggest annual policy meetings, with everything from chip technology to land reform and a revamp to the nation's biggest tax source possibly on the cards at the so-called Third Plenum. What isn't expected is the kind of major policy pivot that's often been seen in the past. Read our guide here.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his new cabinet, allocating ministerial posts to business-friendly opposition politicians while retaining close ally Enoch Godongwana as finance minister and signaling his intent to revive economic growth. The announcement of the new executive — which prompted an extension of the rand's post-election rally — came a month after the African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority and was forced to invite rivals to join a broad coalition government.

Kenyan President William Ruto defended his decision to deploy the military to quell nationwide demonstrations over the past two weeks that have left at least 24 people dead. After protesters stormed the National Assembly last week, Ruto withdrew a contentious finance bill that sparked the protests and said that without the new taxes the government will have to ramp up borrowing.

Taiwanese officials said they are concerned China will detain more individuals from the island to pile pressure on President Lai Ching-te, who the government in Beijing sees as an advocate for independence.

North Korea fired at least two suspected ballistic missiles, days after launching a rocket to test a new multiple warhead system for delivering a nuclear strike.

A Russian jet dropped a glide bomb on Kharkiv, killing at least one civilian at a mail hub as Ukraine's second-largest city continues to sustain frequent aerial strikes.

Israel is committed to fighting Hamas until the Iran-backed militant group is eliminated and all the other goals of the war are achieved, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, as a drone attack yesterday by Hezbollah militants injured 18 Israeli soldiers, one of them seriously, according to the nation's military.

President Joe Biden's campaign is going on the attack against donors, consultants, officials and media voices calling on him to drop out of the 2024 race after his devastating debate performance against Donald Trump.

Aides spent the weekend publicly dismissing suggestions that Biden reconsider his candidacy. In private calls, public memos and media appearances, they mocked those who suggested the president self-inflicted a fatal wound as "bed wetters" out of touch with real Americans.

While top Democratic lawmakers rallied around the president, concern about Biden's candidacy may be extending more widely.

A post-debate poll by CBS News found just 28% of registered voters believed he should be running for president, including only 54% of his own party. Some 72% said Biden didn't have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president.

Forcing Biden from the ticket is virtually impossible under Democratic Party rules, and the president and his allies have decades of connections throughout Washington.

Biden's team also has few alternatives as long as the president wants to remain in the race, necessitating a posture in which staffers must stake their credibility and legacies to not further diminish a wounded candidate.

One thing to watch today: Regional Fed surveys suggest the latest ISM Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index will show a slower decline in demand in June.

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The Australian government dealt a blow to international students by raising visa application fees by 125%, part of a push to slow immigration and address a chronic shortage of accommodation. Australia has one of the biggest international education sectors in the world, worth about A$48 billion ($32 billion) a year, and international graduates account for one-third of the nation's permanent skilled migrant intake, according to the Grattan Institute.

Hurricane Beryl is set to cause massive damage across the Caribbean's Windward Islands today. What forecasters find alarming is that Beryl formed in an area of the Atlantic between the Caribbean and the Cabo Verde Islands, a stretch of ocean called the main development region that doesn't usually become active until late August. An early start there portends future disasters, and the hurricane center is already tracking what may be the season's next storm.

The predicted path of Hurricane Beryl.

Thanks to the 26 people who answered the Friday quiz and congratulations to Chor Jye Lee, who was the first to name Myanmar as the country in which the head of the military junta made a rare apology to a prominent Buddhist monastery after security forces killed its abbot.

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