The Iranian minister further said votes of more than 3,000 ballot boxes have so far been counted in Tehran.
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Iran has dozens of political groupings and organizations, but no major, longstanding parties like in the West. Broadly speaking, the election is a showdown between hard-liners in one camp, and relative moderates supporting Rouhani and reformists on the other.
Reformists and moderate conservatives are leading in the race for Iran’s parliament according to early election results, indicating that President Hassan Rouhani may face a relatively friendlier house to pursue his domestic agenda.
Supporters of Rouhani, who promoted the nuclear deal, were pitted against hardliners close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who are wary of detente with Western countries.
Preliminary Interior Ministry data indicated reformist leader Mohammad Reza Aref leading the list of 30 candidates in Tehran, according to the IRNA news service.
“The people showed their power once again and gave more credibility and strength to their elected government”, Mr Rouhani said, adding he would work with anyone who won election to build a future for the industrialised, oil-exporting country.
While Iranians were voting for lawmakers, the outcome of the vote could be interpreted as a comment on the level of support for the policies of Rouhani, who is up for re-election next year.
“No one has the power to resist the will of the majority of the people and whomever people don’t want must step aside”, Rafsanjani tweeted on Sunday.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former centrist president, Mr Rouhani and other moderate clerics lead the Tehran constituency polls for 16 seats of the Experts Assembly, while only two prominent hardline figures have so far made it to the next assembly from the capital.
Indeed, the election appears to demonstrate a slow-but-continuing political shift in Iran.
Current member of the Assembly Mohsen Qomi and Friday Prayers leaders Mohammad Aqa Emami and Mohammad Ali Movahedi are in third to fifth slots.
But within the range allowed by the Islamic Republic, the voting may provide a referendum on Rouhani’s policies and his promises that the nuclear deal, the lifting of most worldwide sanctions and a greater degree of opening to the West can help boost a battered economy – a top concern for most voters.
An Iranian woman presses her inked-finger on a registering paper during the parliamentary and Assemb …
Around 33 million people cast ballots in Friday’s vote to elect parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the next supreme leader.
“In this campaign Rouhani and his coalition have been saying that the nuclear deal was first step to economic and political dignity, and that these elections were the next step”, said Marashi of the National Iranian American Council.
The assembly election is important because should Khamenei, who is 76, die during its eight-year term, its 88 members would pick his successor.
A number of seats will be decided in run-offs in late April because no candidate won the required 25 percent of votes cast.
If turnout proves no higher than in 2012 but the parliamentary election produces a radically different result it could be because different parts of the electorate voted this time around. Five of the initial winners were women.
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Only Jannati, who chairs the conservative-dominated Guardian Council which must confirm the results of both elections, was safe, though he was well down the field in 15th place.
