After 85 goalless minutes, the pace-setters fell behind to Ramin Rezaeian's goal only to hit back with stoppage-time strikes from Farshid Talebi and Ghazi Najafabadi.
And their day was further improved as nearest pursuers Esteghlal and Sepahan shared a 1-1 draw. Ahmad Jamshidian gave Sepahan the lead but the visitors, one point ahead of their opponents in the table, levelled in the last minute through Mehdi Seyed-Salehi.
