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Irans President Hassan Rouhani won re-election by a wide margin Saturday, giving the moderate cleric a second four-year term.

The 68-year-old incumbent secured a commanding lead of 57 percent. His nearest rival in the four-man race was hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi, who secured 38 percent of the vote.

Rouhani won the presidential election back in 2013 with only 51 percent of the vote.

As Rouhani appeared close to victory, some female drivers held out the V for victory sign and flashed their car lights on highways in Tehran's affluent north.

"We made the victory again. We sent back Raisi to Mashhad," his conservative hometown in northeastern Iran, said Narges, a 43 year-old beauty salon owner, who declined to give her full name. She said she spent more than three hours outside waiting to vote, "but it was worth it."

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli announced the vote tallies in a televised news conference, based on a count of more than 99 percent of the ballots. He said Rouhani garnered 23.5 million votes out of 41.2 million ballots cast. Iran has 56.4 million eligible voters.

Iran's president is the second-most powerful figure within Iran's political system. He is subordinate to the supreme leader, who is chosen by a clerical panel and has the ultimate say over all matters of state.

Election officials repeatedly extended voting hours until midnight to accommodate long lines of voters, some of whom said they waited hours to cast their ballots. Analysts have said a higher turnout would likely benefit Rouhani.

Friday's vote was largely a referendum on Rouhani's more moderate political policies, which paved the way for the landmark 2015 nuclear deal that won Iran relief from some sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Rouhani has come to embody more liberal and reform-minded Iranians' hopes for greater freedoms and openness at home, and better relations with the outside world.

Raisi, his nearest challenger, is close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who stopped short of endorsing anyone in the election. Raisi ran a populist campaign, vowing to fight corruption and fix the economy while boosting welfare payments to the poor.

The two other candidates left in the race, Mostafa Mirsalim, a former culture minister, and Mostafa Hashemitaba, a pro-reform figure who previously ran for president in 2001, respectively have 478,000 and 215,000 votes each.

Hashemitaba was among the first to predict an outright win for Rouhani as he offered his congratulations Saturday morning.

"Rouhani will apply his ever-increasing efforts for the dignity of Iran" in his next term, the reformist said.

The Tehran Stock Exchange rallied after the election results came out, extending a recent winning streak to close nearly 1 percent higher at its highest level in three months.

Although considered a moderate by Iranian standards, Rouhani was nonetheless the favorite pick for those seeking more liberal reforms in the conservative Islamic Republic.

He appeared to embrace a more reform-minded role during the campaign as he openly criticized hard-liners and Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force involved in the war in Syria and the fight against Islamic State militants in neighboring Iraq.

That gave hope to his supporters, who during recent campaign rallies called for the release of two reformist leaders of the 2009 Green Movement who remain under house arrest. The two figures, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, both endorsed Raisi, as did Mohammad Khatami, another reformist who served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005.

Iran has no credible political polling to serve as harder metrics for the street buzz around candidates, who need more than 50 percent of the vote to seal victory and avoid a runoff. But what scant data that was available before the vote showed Rouhani in the lead.

The position of president is a powerful post. He oversees a vast state bureaucracy employing more than 2 million people, is charged with naming Cabinet members and other officials to key posts, and plays a significant role in shaping both domestic and foreign policy.

All candidates for elected office must be vetted, a process that excludes anyone calling for radical change, along with most reformists. No woman has ever been approved to run for president.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Iran's incumbent president Rouhani wins second term | Fox News

David A. Andelman, member of the board of contributors of USA Today, is the author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today." He formerly served as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. This opinions in this article belong to the author.

(CNN)At first glance, it appears that there are only two clear paths that the US can take when dealing with the Middle East: the Sunni path of Saudi Arabia and the bulk of its Gulf allies, on the one hand; or the Shiite path represented by Iran.

There is the path of dictators -- like Egypt's autocratic Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the blinkered and aging royal family of Saudi Arabia, and the corrupt and helpless rulers of Iraq -- all Sunnis.

By contrast, there is the young and desperately eager majority of Iranians, all Shiites, seeking to drag their nation out from under the yoke of a medieval clerical oppression.

The correct, if difficult, third path for America is to straddle between Sunni and Shiite. But going on the evidence of Trump's first overseas trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel -- both firm enemies of Iran and critical of the Obama administration's perceived warmth towards Iran -- this is a path that the President seems determined to ignore.

Of course, while that new road can be paved with good intentions, we know where such paths can lead. Still, it is of vital importance that we give these youths a chance to explore it.

What incentive is there for Iran to move toward peace, toward the West and toward the US if we become known not as peacemakers but simply arms merchants to Iran's sworn Sunni enemies in Saudi Arabia?

Trump visits Saudi Arabia on first trip 06:17

It was decidedly not a gesture to the reality that this is precisely what these very Iranian people voted for two days earlier.

Yet under the leadership of the blinkered Trump administration and the Sunni dictators to which it has hitched America's wagons, these forces of potential progress in Iran are being given few choices but to look elsewhere for weapons to defend their Shiite faith and their nation against the weapons being stockpiled by their Sunni enemies.

But there is more to the new era that may mark the path of Iran. If, as now appears increasingly likely following the weekend's events in Riyadh, the Sunni-Shiite divide continues to widen, it will have unfortunate consequences for the war on terrorism that President Trump seems so intent to pursue in short-sighted alliance with questionable partners.

For while the battle against ISIS is quite clearly a battle -- as President Trump has expressed it -- between good and evil, it is also a conflict that has gone on for centuries between Sunni and Shiite.

Trump and his advisers seem to be acting on the ancient pronouncement that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They simply have been unable or unwilling to identify who could be our real and true enemies, and who our long-term friends.

Iran, apparently, no matter how vocally its people scream for change, will continue to find only deaf ears from Washington to Riyadh.

Excerpt from:
Trump's anti-Iran aggression couldn't come at a worse time ...

To the editor: Iranians easily reelected Hassan Rouhani as president. Three-fourths of eligible voters cast their ballots, a better turnout than in our own election. (Leaving his troubles at home, Trump gets a royal welcome in Saudi Arabia, May 20)

We refer to Iran as our enemy, and yet Rouhani is considered a moderate, and in last years parliamentary elections, moderates and reformers had their strongest showing ever in Iran.

This weekend, President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, where no national elections are held. That country is governed by a royal family. Islam is the state religion, and the puritanical Wahhabi Islamic movement that dominates Saudi Arabia controls many aspects of life.

Saudi Arabia is our friend, and yet we go around the world selling and evangelizing equality, freedom of choice, free elections, self-determination and democracy. How can we look at ourselves in the mirror without seeing two faces?

Rogelio Pea, Montebello

..

To the editor: Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, while Iran just held a presidential election. The Saudis ban the Bible, while Christians and Jews have reserved seats in the Iranian parliament. Saudi money financed the Sept. 11 attacks, while no terrorist attack in the U.S. has been linked to Iran. More than half of all Iranian university students are women, and in Saudi Arabia, women are not even allowed to drive.

Can someone explain exactly why we ally with Saudi Arabia against Iran?

Chris Norby, Fullerton

..

To the editor: Trump seemed truly happy in Saudi Arabia. He was welcomed as a king and his children as royal heirs. He is comfortable among his royal hosts, away from the dissenters at home who fail to show proper respect.

And why? For one, Trump urges a greater fight against terrorism, but he fails to point out that most of the Sept. 11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia. For another, he lashes out against extremism, but he ignores that Al Qaeda and Islamic State have derived much of their strength from Wahhabism, which is supported by the Saudi royals.

Trump should enjoy being royalty, but he should not bring it home with him.

Peter Langenberg, South Pasadena

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Iran, Spanish company sign $615 million deal for oil pipes Sacramento Bee Iran on Wednesday signed a deal worth $615 million or euros 550 million with a Spanish-Iranian consortium under which the group will provide pipes used in Iran's oil industry. It was the first major deal for Iran's oil industry since President ... and more »

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Iran, Spanish company sign $615 million deal for oil pipes - Sacramento Bee

A U.S. air raid against Iranian-backed fighters in southern Syria last week represents a volatile new phase of the conflict that could trigger a wider confrontation between the United States and Iran and their allies on the ground.

Until last weeks strike, the United States and Iran had managed to steer clear of a direct confrontation in Iraq and Syria, where each has hundreds of military advisors on the ground, embedded with local forces. In Iraq, they share a common enemy in the Islamic State. In Syria, the two sides are waging different wars: U.S. aircraft and special operations forces are pushing to roll back Islamic State militants, while Iran is backing the Syrian regime against opposition forces in a multi-sided civil war.

But as the Islamic States grip on territory weakens, the United States and Iran are increasingly at odds as their local partners vie for control of key terrain along the Syria-Iraq border.

In the May 18 air strike, U.S. F-16s hit a convoy of Iranian-armed Shiite fighters who failed to heed warnings to stay away from a base at al Tanf, close to the Jordanian and Iraqi borders, which is used by American and British special forces to train local militias fighting the Islamic State. The air strike marked the first time U.S. forces had targeted Irans proxies in Syria. A few days later, the Iranian proxies returned to the area, and U.S. warplanes buzzed them in a clear warning to keep away, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

U.S. military officers played down the incidents, saying the airstrike was merely a matter of safeguarding American special operations forces in the countrys southeast.

This doesnt signal any change in strategy, said a senior U.S. military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. strategy, under both President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama, has concentrated on defeating Islamic State forces on the battlefield and depriving them of territory in Iraq and Syria. With the exception of missile strikes against Syria last month in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration so far has chosen not to enter into a military confrontation with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, or its patrons Iran and Russia

Having pushed Islamic State back in much of northeastern Syria, U.S. commanders are determined to oust the militants from their last urban bastion in Raqqa. A U.S.-armed and trained force of Kurdish and Arab fighters has begun to encircle Raqqa, and once the city falls, American officers hope to hunt down ISIS in eastern Deir Ezzor province and the Euphrates River Valley, where the group still exists in force.

But Iran has grown alarmed over the growing presence of U.S. special operations forces in southern Syria, and the progress of Syrian Kurdish and Arab troops on the battlefield. Iran is keen to secure a corridor linking Tehran and Baghdad to Syria and Lebanon, and Tehran state-run media have claimed the U.S. forces are in the border area to block any supply routes for Iran.

In response, Tehran has deployed thousands of Afghan and Iraqi Shiite fighters, and in recent weeks has sent 3,000 Lebanese Hezbollah troops to the southeastern region between al Tanf and Deir Ezzor, according to reports from Fars news agency, affiliated with Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Hezbollah troops were sent to the al-Tanf area to prepare the Syrian army and its allies for thwarting the U.S. plots in the region and establish security at the Palmyra-Baghdad road, Fars wrote, just hours before the U.S. air raid. They could also serve as a blocking force to keep U.S.-backed fighters from moving north out of al Tanf.

The escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran in Syria coincided with tougher rhetoric from President Trump directed at Iran. In a speech this week in Saudi Arabia, Trump labeled Iran as a source of destruction and chaos, and called on countries in the region to form a united front against Tehran.

Although Trump has promised to adopt an aggressive stance with Tehran, the White House is still conducting a review of its policy toward Iran and the administration has yet to articulate U.S. goals along the Syria-Iraq border.

Its not clear to me yet if the administration has a detailed strategy [on] how to manage its presence and its allies presence in eastern Syria, said Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria and now a fellow at the Middle East Institute.

If the administration is not careful, its going to be a slippery slope. It seems like theres a potential for more conflict.

The Trump administration has given the U.S. military the authority to base about 1,000 troops mostly special operations forces in Syria, spread out among several small outposts in the Kurdish north, a Marine Corps fire base close to Raqqa, and at al Tanf in the south. These small outposts are separated by hundreds of miles of territory where ISIS is steadily losing control, and which regime forces and their Iranian allies see as fertile ground to reestablish the Syrian governments control.

The U.S.-led coalition is keeping a wary eye on the militias. One U.S. defense official told FP they are watching the militias inch their way eastward toward Deir Ezzor, where the Syrian government maintains a significant and isolated military outpost. The base has long been cut off from other areas of regime control and can only be resupplied by airdrops, but it was recently reinforced by about 1,000 Syrian soldiers, giving the regime in Damascus some fighting power in the area.

American military leaders have long said they expect ISIS to retreat into the Euphrates River Valley that connects Raqqa to the Iraqi border, and U.S. and coalition aircraft have been striking ISIS targets in the valley for months. U.S. warplanes carried out more air strikes in the area this week.

Some of the Iranian-backed militia fighters remain in place near al Tanf, despite the U.S. air strike and last weekends warning. If they resume their advance, coalition forces will defend themselves, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters on Tuesday.

Another military official added that we have a good understanding they will want to continue moving east toward Deir Ezzor, and the fighters are being closely tracked.

When the fight moves to the Euphrates valley in Deir Ezzor, the risks of an unintended conflict will grow. With U.S-backed Free Syrian Army forces moving from the south, Kurdish and Arab Syrian Democratic Forces advancing from the north and west, pro-regime militias trying to push into the area and both American and Russian aircraft buzzing overhead, some worry that the crowded battlefield could lead to unwanted incidents.

The Iranian supported militias often operate in close proximity to U.S. troops, especially in Iraq. An FP reporter, visiting a U.S. military base south of Mosul earlier this year, saw a chart in the operations center with the flags of the major armed Shiite militias operating in the vicinity, so U.S. forces could identify what groups are operating close by, often just on the perimeter of their base.

Last September, U.S and coalition jets inadvertently struck a small outpost in the east of Syria, killing over 60 Assad regime soldiers in an incident that angered Moscow and highlighted how confused the battlefield there can be.

With American troops on the ground, and advisors moving around with small local units, there remains the danger of Iranian retaliation. During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Tehran provided Shiite militias with deadly roadside bombs and rockets that claimed hundreds of American lives.

Already, Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups have increased their anti-U.S. propaganda in Iraq, accusing Washington of aiding the Islamic State and pressuring the Baghdad government to expel American troops advising the Iraqi security forces inMosul and across the country, Ahmad Majidyar, director of the IranObserved Project at the Middle East Institute, wrote recently.

Any response from Iran would be asymmetrical, Majidyar said, and could come in places like Iraq.

Photo Credit: JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images

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Are the US and Iran on a Collision Course in Syria? - Foreign Policy (blog)