Polls opened in Iran on Friday for a run-off presidential election that will test the clerical rulers’ popularity amid voter apathy at a time of regional tensions and a standoff with the West over Tehran’s nuclear programme, Reuters reported.

State TV said polling stations opened their doors to voters at 8 a.m. local time (0430 GMT). Polling will end at 6 p.m. (1430 GMT), but are usually extended until as late as midnight. The final result will be announced on Saturday, although initial figures may come out sooner.

The run-off follows a June 28 ballot with historic low turnout, when over 60% of Iranian voters abstained from the snap election for a successor to Ebrahim Raisi, following his death in a helicopter crash. The low participation is seen by critics as a vote of no confidence in the Islamic Republic.

The vote is a tight race between low-key lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian, the sole moderate in the original field of four candidates, and hardline former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

While the poll will have little impact on the Islamic Republic’s policies, the president will be closely involved in selecting the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader who calls all the shots on top state matters, read the report.

“I have heard that people’s zeal and interest is higher than in the first round. May God make it this way as this will be gratifying news,” Khamenei told state TV after casting his vote.

Khamenei acknowledged on Wednesday “a lower than expected turnout” in earlier voting, but said “it is wrong to assume those who abstained in the first round are opposed to the Islamic rule”.

Voter turnout has plunged over the past four years, which critics say shows support for the system has eroded amid growing public discontent over economic hardship and curbs on political and social freedoms.

According to Reuters only 48% of voters participated in the 2021 election that brought Raisi to power, and turnout was 41% in a parliamentary election in March.

The election coincides with escalating regional tension due to the war between Israel and Iranian allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as increased Western pressure on Iran over its fast-advancing nuclear programme.

“Voting gives power …even if there are criticisms, people should vote as each vote is like a missile launch (against enemies),” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Commander Amirali Hajizadeh told state media.

The next president is not expected to produce any major policy shift on Iran’s nuclear programme or change in support for militia groups across the Middle East, but he runs the government day-to-day and can influence the tone of Iran’s foreign and domestic policy.

The rivals are establishment men loyal to Iran’s theocratic rule, but analysts said a win by anti-Westerner Jalili would signal a potentially even more antagonistic domestic and foreign policy.

A triumph by Pezeshkian might promote a pragmatic foreign policy, ease tensions over now-stalled negotiations with major powers to revive the nuclear pact, and improve prospects for social liberalisation and political pluralism.

However, many voters are sceptical about Pezeshkian’s ability to fulfil his campaign promises as the former health minister has publicly stated that he had no intention of confronting the powerful security hawks and clerical rulers.

Many Iranians still have painful memories of the handling of nationwide unrest sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in 2022, which was quelled by a violent state crackdown involving mass detentions and even executions.

“I will not vote. This is a big NO to the Islamic Republic because of Mahsa (Amini). I want a free country, I want a free life,” said university student Sepideh, 19, in Tehran.

The hashtag #ElectionCircus has been widely posted on social media platform X since last week, with some activists at home and abroad calling for an election boycott, arguing that a high turnout would legitimise the Islamic Republic.

Both candidates have vowed to revive the flagging economy, beset by mismanagement, state corruption and sanctions reimposed since 2018 after the U.S. ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers, Reuters reported.

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Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon have reiterated their call for the formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan.

The leaders of the two countries stressed that peace and stability in Afghanistan is fundamental for the prosperity and progress of the region.

“In this regard, they considered it important for Afghanistan to have an inclusive government,” the two leaders said in a joint statement issued by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.

Sharif and Rahmon also expressed concern on terrorism threats and stressed the need for Dushanbe and Islamabad to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.

Although the statement did not specify what security threat the two countries face, Pakistan has previously claimed that attacks in the country are rooted in the presence and activities of the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP) in Afghanistan.

Tajikistan has also expressed concern that the risk of terrorist groups infiltrating Tajikistan from Afghanistan is increasing.

The Islamic Emirate, however, has denied the claims and stressed that it will not allow Afghanistan’s territory to be used against other countries.

During his visit to Dushanbe, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tajikistan.

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At least 116 people, many of them women and children, were killed in a stampede at a Hindu religious gathering in north India on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the country’s worst such tragedies in years.

The stampede happened in a village in Hathras district, about 200 km (125 miles) southeast of the national capital New Delhi, where authorities said thousands had gathered in sweltering late afternoon temperatures, Reuters reported.

“The incident happened due to overcrowding at the time when people were trying to leave the venue,” Ashish Kumar, administrator of the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, told reporters.

Chaitra V., another senior state official, told broadcaster India Today that people may have lost their footing as they sought water in the heat.

“There was wet mud at one place where people may have slipped. Also because of the heat, people may have made their way to the spot where water was kept and that could have caused the incident as well,” she said.

Video clips recorded by news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed bodies piled into the back of trucks and laid out in vehicles.

Purses and bags covered in dust, were heaped up at the venue, with people sitting on their haunches sifting through them to identify their belongings.

Mobile phones were similarly piled together, waiting to be claimed by their owners.

A video on social media showed a large crowd packed into a tented area, standing and listening to devotional tunes as they waved their hands in the direction of the religious leader who sat on a stage.

It also showed some women hanging on to the bamboo poles holding up the canopy to get a better view above the heads of the large crowd.

Reuters could not immediately verify the social media images.

“There must have been about 50,000 people…at the gate on the highway, some people were going left and some people were going right, the stampede was caused in that confusion,” Suresh Chandra, a witness who was at the gathering, told local media.

Seema, a woman who travelled from a town almost 60 km away to attend the event, said she was leaving the venue when the stampede occurred. She was accompanied by three relatives, two of whom were killed.

Stampedes and other accidents involving large crowds at religious gatherings and pilgrimage sites have happened in the past and are often blamed on poor crowd management.

While 115 people were killed in central India in a stampede in 2013, nearly 250 died in 2008 and more than 340 were killed during an annual pilgrimage in the western state of Maharashtra in 2005, according to local media reports.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered an investigation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the federal government was assisting the state and announced a compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,400) to the families of the dead and 50,000 rupees to those injured.