Iranian reformists and relative moderates who support last year’s nuclear deal won the most seats in parliament and a clerical body charged with selecting the next supreme leader in a major setback for hard-liners who opposed the agreement, Associated Press reported on Monday based on official election results.
Final results released by the interior ministry and broadcast on state TV show that reformists, who favour expanded social freedoms and engagement with the West, and other backers of President Hassan Rouhani, won at least 85 seats. Moderate conservatives -- who split with the hard-line camp and support the nuclear deal -- won 73, giving the two camps together a majority over hard-liners in the 290-seat assembly.
Hard-liners won just 68 seats, down from 112 in the current parliament. Five seats will go to religious minorities, and the remaining 59 will be decided in a runoff, likely to be held in April.
While none of the country’s three main political camps will dominate the next parliament, the assembly will be much friendlier to President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate elected in 2013 on pledges to relax restrictions on freedom of expression and improve ties with the West.
Reformists and moderate conservatives are expected to work together — at least on economic issues — and the next parliament will be far friendlier to Rouhani, making it more likely he can also deliver on promises to promote social freedoms.
Moderates also won a 59% majority in the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body which will choose the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been Iran’s top decision-maker since 1989. The 76-year-old underwent prostate surgery in 2014, leading to renewed speculations about the state of his health.
Rouhani and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, both considered moderates, retained their seats in the assembly.
However, several prominent hard-liners, including Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, were also re-elected. Jannati is the leader of the Guardian Council, an unelected, constitutional watchdog that vets election candidates, and has been a leading opponent of democratic reforms.
He has also led efforts to disqualify reformist candidates. Out of 3,000 reformists who applied to run in this year’s elections, just 200 made it through the vetting process.
The Assembly of Experts is elected every eight years. Moderates previously held around 20 seats in the assembly.
Rouhani and his allies likely benefited from last month’s implementation of the nuclear agreement, which lifted crippling sanctions that have been in place since 2012.
But analysts said the election results were also driven by domestic factors, including lingering anger at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani’s hard-line predecessor. Ahmadinejad repeatedly clashed with the West over his dramatic expansion of the nuclear programme, his questioning of the scale of the Holocaust and his predictions of Israel’s demise.
His policies led many conservatives to break with hard-liners, and the moderate conservatives’ support for the nuclear talks and subsequent agreement widened the rift.
Reformists last rose to power in 1997 with the election of President Mohammad Khatami and secured a majority in parliament three years later. But the pendulum soon swung back toward hard-liners, who dominated Iranian politics from 2004 until Rouhani’s election nearly three years ago.
Khamenei, who makes all final decisions on major policies, insists he is above the political fray. But the supreme leader remains deeply suspicious of the West and has warned that too much openness to Western influence could dilute the country’s Islamic values.