Moderates Win Tehran Seats in Iran Elections

Four years ago, parliamentary elections were held in Iran. This in turn forced the Guardian Council of the Constitution to reexamine the disqualifications and approve some of the disqualified candidates. The result was a parliament with only five reformist MPs, a minority of moderate conservatives, and power evenly divided between conservatives and extremists. Meanwhile, all but one of the 16 Tehran seats in the 88-member Assembly of Experts will be in the hands of this alliance of Reformists, moderates and government-leaning Principlists.

Reformists hold fewer than 20 seats in the outgoing parliament and have been virtually shut out of politics since losing their parliamentary majority in the 2004 elections.

Allies of moderate President Hassan Rouhani and other reformers managed to sweep the available seats in Tehran in the recent contests, while securing a majority in the Iranian parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that will choose Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s successor.

The outcome in the results for Tehran on Monday was a blow to the conservative Islamic establishment, although it retains decisive power due to Iran’s unwieldy dual system of clerical and republican rule. This worldview is not the product of sympathies for the West or a fondness of Western culture, but is rather an accurate reading of Iran’s economic situation and its impact on the public, particularly the younger generation, which has been the chief casualty of the country’s high unemployment rate, inflation, and global isolation.

“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.

None of this can be what USA and European leaders intended when they were negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. That’s a theme backed up by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Iranian former vice president and candidate for parliamentary election Mohammad Reza Aref (2nd L) and his wife cast their ballots during elections in Tehran on Friday.

First, here’s what happened: In the first election, which was for the 290-seat Iranian parliament, reformist lawmakers snagged at least 85 seats at the time of writing. The most influential element in this arena is the Revolutionary Guard, which is deeply involved in the fighting in Syria, responsible for relations with Hezbollah, and involved in the fighting in Iraq and the provision of aid to the Houthis in Yemen. Significantly, however, the Supreme Leader directed the negotiating team on the nuclear issue to refrain from engaging in dialogue on regional issues. Following the stampede at the Hajj that killed hundreds of Iranian citizens, the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr’s killing, and Saudi Arabia’s continuing military campaign in Yemen, Iran’s conservatives find the noises coming out of Riyadh increasingly hard to ignore.

Economic conditions in Iran will remain the key challenge for the administration. From Israel’s perspective, there is little difference between the positions of Iran’s radical camp toward Israel and those of the camp that is classified as “moderate”. “Maybe people don’t love – maybe they hate – the people who attacked the nuclear deal”.

State television said Friday’s vote heralds “the end of the presence of a powerful majority in the parliament that overshadowed decision-making apparatus in the country over the past decade”.

Democracy in Iran is very different to that practised in the West, but such debates show that far from being a rigid theocracy there are checks and balances that make Iran a bright spot in the general gloom that covers much of West Asia today. And well over half of those seeking a seat on the Assembly of Experts were not permitted to run. In addition, not one of the political candidates criticised the supreme leader or the IRGC.

The elections, however, should not be viewed as the final word in the political struggle between the major forces of power in Iran, which has yet to be decided.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, was elected in 2013 on promises of bringing the nuclear question to a conclusion so that crippling economic sanctions could be lifted.