Particularly for the young Iranian generation that voted for the first time, this is a real moment of hope.
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While gains by moderates and reformists in Friday’s polls were most evident in the capital, where they won all Tehran’s 30 seats according to early results, the sheer scale of the advances there suggests a legislature more friendly to the pragmatist Rouhani has emerged as a distinct possibility.
However, despite the gains by Rouhani and his allies, the conservatives remain in power overall due to the two-tier system of clerical and republican rule. Moderate conservatives, who also supported the nuclear agreement, won 73, giving the two camps a majority in the 290-seat assembly.
Run-offs will take place in April in 59 districts where no candidate won more than 25% of the vote. Some candidates were backed by both camps. Jannati is also the chairman of the Guardian Council, a cleric vetting body that disqualified the majority of reformist candidates from running for the elections.
The election results represent “a reaction against radicals” from voters, Amir Mohebbian, a Tehran-based analyst with close links to politicians of all hues, told AFP. “This is the formation of a domestic and foreign policy in the country which would satisfy all three factions. The vocabulary will be different, but the balance of power will not shift”, he said.
After losing a number of high-profile elections in the last decade, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has made a comeback, winning the most votes in Tehran for the Assembly of Experts.
“There is a feel-good factor for the population in the sense that the general outcome is one that satisfies public opinion because it sees stark improvement in the situation of moderates and because it gave the public an opportunity to express dissatisfaction with the hardliners, even though they are aware that in actual policy terms that might not make a difference”, said Khonsari.
Secondly, despite the projected victory for Mr Rouhani and reformists, other hardline institutions such as the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ministry of intelligence (Etela’at), the judiciary and the office of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, still have most of the control over life in Iran. This is why, despite their exclusion, reformists are encouraging the electorate to turn out at the polls.
They nearly certainly cement Rouhani’s prospects of re-election next year, since friend and foe alike credit him for the nuclear deal that offered Iran a new relationship with the world.
Iran’s state-run news agency reported that Rouhani said, “The competition is over”. The surprising swell in favor of Rouhani in last week’s voting also could signal a show of solidarity from the streets against hard-liners before Rouhani faces reelection next year.
The new composition of the clerical body has been considered especially important.
The nuclear deal went through because Khamenei wanted it to end crippling sanctions. Almost always at the centre of Iran’s intricate webs of power, the arch-fixer is famous for his pragmatism and political acumen.
While conservatives were wiped out in Tehran they retained some seats in other cities and enjoyed strong support in rural areas.
The election, held Friday, had been widely framed as a referendum on the country’s nuclear deal, a diplomatic effort that had been opposed by Iran’s more conservative contingents.
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Khatami was then at the height of his popularity and the hardliners seemed on the ropes, humiliated by his landslide 1997 victory. “According to reformist figures and many Iranians, their options were between bad and worse”. However, while there are more moderates than conservatives confirmed in parliament, there are also many independents, though we won’t know the final numbers for some time.
