Conservatives were also experiencing setbacks in the election to the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member group of clerics that would pick Khamenei’s successor if he dies in the next eight years. “Reformists now hold fewer than 20 seats and have been virtually shut out of politics since losing their parliamentary majority in the 2004 elections”, the news service writes.
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Israel and Iran support for terrorism: A more moderate government is unlikely to lead to any significant change in policy toward Israel, which Iranian leaders consider to be an avowed enemy, or Iran’s backing for U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as the Hezbollah militia based in Lebanon.
Saeed Leylaz, a pro-reformist analyst and economist, is encouraged enough by the election results to believe Rouhani and parliament can now start working to liberalize the economy, curb corruption, entice investment and boost productivity.
However, news organizations linked to the hardliners claimed they cleaned up in rural elections and would prove to be the big winners in the election, once the final tally was complete. And of the 801 who put their names down for the Assembly of Experts election, 161 were qualified.
The elections were Iran’s first since global sanctions were lifted in connection with a landmark nuclear deal in July, and reformist gains against hard-liners will nearly certainly affect Tehran’s efforts to rebound from decades of political and economic isolation.
Hardliners who opposed last summer’s nuclear deal brokered with the United States and other world powers won only 68 seats.
“We can not close the doors and make people buy home-made cars”, Rouhani said.
The leader of the hardline candidates in Tehran, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a former speaker of Parliament, joined the prominent casualties of the election.
There were also four conservative-leaning independent MPs elected and five minorities of no political affiliation. However, the voter turnout at the recent elections roughly reached 50 percent, what suggests that a significant part of Tehran citizens still doubts that their voices change anything and continue boycotting the elections.
While conservatives still keep hold of many seats in both bodies, the assembly’s results are in favor of the reformists not because reformist candidates are stepping into the clerical body but because of alliances with successful moderate-leaning candidates.
Some of Iran’s most notorious hardliners were cast into the political wilderness, including Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, the spiritual mentor of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who lost his assembly spot.
There is no clear cut victory for either of the two camps, as none on its own will have a parliamentary majority. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani won the majority of the votes in Tehran while Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the incumbent head of the assembly of experts, and Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a prominent Principlist and a sitting member of the assembly, failed to garner enough votes to keep their positions.
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Reformists, who want better relations with the outside world and more freedoms at home, were hoping to gain influence in the conservative-dominated bodies. The discharge of this duty may be imminent, as CNN noted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 76, and rumored to be in ill health.
