Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori Hamedani, a renowned Shia religious authority in Iran, cast his vote in the 13th presidential and sixth city and village councils elections on Friday morning.
The Grand Ayatollah cast his vote in Qom city, the hub of Shia religion and home to greatest seminary schools.
Grand Ayatollah Jaafar Sobhani, another renowned Shiite authority also cast the ballots in the city.
Meanwhile, Ayatollah Mahdi Shabzendedar and Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Modarresi Yazdi, members of the Guardian Council, cast their votes in Qom city. The Guardian Council is the body that vets candidates in presidential and parliamentary elections in Iran.
Iran’s presidential election is being held nationwide and in 133 countries.
Some 500 international journalists from 226 foreign media are covering the event in Iran.
59,310,307 Iranians are eligible to vote, from which 1.3 million are first-voters and 3.5 million are Iranians abroad, according to statistics from the Ministry of Interior.
Presidential candidates include Expediency Discernment Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei Mirqaed, Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi, MP Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh and former CBI Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati.
Saeed Jalili, Mohsen Mehralizadeh and Alireza Zakani, three other presidential candidates, dropped out of the presidential race.
The 13th presidential election is held simultaneous with the sixth round of city and village councils elections, the first mid-term for 11th parliament’s by-election, and the second mid-term for the fifth Assembly of Experts election.
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