Reformists and moderate conservatives have won a majority of seats in the Iranian parliament following the first elections in the country since a nuclear deal was signed between Iran and the five world powers last July.
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Final results in Iran’s legislative elections.
As Camila Domonoske has noted for The Two Way, “Tehran’s delegation is only a fraction of Iran’s 290-seat parliament”, and conservatives are poised to win seats in other parts of the country. “Let’s open a new chapter based on domestic talents & global opportunities”, the president wrote on Twitter soon after the last results were read out on state television.
In all, reformist-backed candidates claimed 52 of the assembly’s 88 seats, according to the Interior Ministry, including 15 of 16 races in Tehran.
The Assembly of Experts serves a function similar to that of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals, and will one day have to pick a successor to Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In Iran’s capital, Tehran, all 30 reformist candidates, eight of them women, won seats.
Foad Izadi, an assistant professor at the Faculty of World Studies in Tehran University said the reformists’ strong showing was prompted by Rouhani’s success in reaching a nuclear agreement between Iran and worldwide powers, the removal of most of the sanctions that had strangled the country’s economy over the past decade and restoration of relations with the West.
Channels on Telegram, an increasingly popular messaging app, went much further, with one run by Iran’s ideological Basij militia asserting that Tehran had “said “no” to the leader”, and that Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani should “not send anyone to [fight in] Syria from Tehran”, implying that they could not be trusted.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the elections…there’s big support for the nuclear deal, and while the Iranian economy will likely contract this year, there’s a lot of optimism about the future”, he said.
Zibakalam hopes Rouhani may be able to secure the freedom of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, presumed winners of the 2009 presidential election that was allegedly “stolen” by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Speaking to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on Tuesday night, Rahmani Fazli pointed to the reasons behind the cancellation of a plan to hold last week’s parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections electronically, saying that the Guardian Council (GC) was opposed to the plan.
The wins for reformists and losses for hardliners represent “a reaction against radicals” from the electorate, Amir Mohebbian, an analyst with close links to the government and conservatives, told AFP.
And that’s true. Iran is still ruled by an incredibly repressive regime that, for example, jails political opponents, supports terrorism, and prevents reformist candidates from participating.
President Rouhani and former President Rafsanjani both won seats in the assembly, along with 50 of their allies.
First of all, none of the major political camps has a majority in the parliament. Conservatives also lost seats.
On voting day, Mr. Khamenei called on a mass vote to “ruin the hope of the enemies”, and with 60 percent turnout nationwide, on Sunday he praised the “glorious participation” of Iranians, “victorious in another great examination”.
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Iran’s political system places significant power in the hands of the conservative Islamic establishment including the Guardian Council, which vets all laws passed by parliament.
