Hardliners sweep to crushing victory in Iran elections

TEHRAN: Hardliners have won a crushing victory in Iran’s parliamentary elections, taking every single seat in the political powerbase of Tehran and leading in regions across the country.

One unofficial tally forecasts that the nationalists and religious conservatives have won 178 of the 290 seats in the chamber with the liberals’ share falling to just 17 and another 43 going to independents.

The triumph of the hardliners, many of whose candidates are affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, has been mirrored by the collapse of support for the reformists in both urban and rural areas.

The turnout in the capital was just over 25%, and 42.5% for the rest of the country. Those figures, if confirmed, would be the lowest for any election since the Islamic revolution which overthrew the Shah in 1979.

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran and leading conservative who came top in the capital with more than 1.2 million votes, is expected to be appointed speaker.

It remains to be seen how the hardliners are going to use their new found power. Several of their leaders have talked about bringing impeachment proceedings against ministers and even the country’s president Hassan Rouhani.

A previous attempt to initiate impeachment proceedings against Rouhani failed to get off the ground in the reformist dominated parliament, but the numbers have now changed drastically.

At the very least there are likely to be attempts to curb the power of the president and his foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, two key figures instrumental in driving through an agreement with international powers on the country’s nuclear programme.

The hardliners had vehemently opposed that deal, holding that it compromised the state’s security and insisting the west would renege on it sooner or later. They have also accused the president and senior ministers of turning a blind eye to corruption.

The outcome of any impeachment move would ultimately depend on the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Guardian Council.

But the weakness of the reformists can be seen in the huge contrast between the polls on Friday and the last parliamentary and presidential elections, when the moderates swept to power with a mandate to carry out sweeping reforms. The turnout was more than 62%. – The Independent