In blow to Iran hard-liners, moderates win clerical assembly
Iranian moderates win majority in parliament, clerical body
(about 5 hours later)
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s moderates have dealt another blow to the country’s hard-liners, winning the majority of seats in last week’s vote for the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body empowered with choosing the nation’s supreme leader.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian moderates have won a majority in parliament and a top clerical body charged with selecting the next supreme leader, dealing a major blow to hard-liners in the first elections held since last summer’s landmark nuclear agreement with world powers.
Top moderates — President Hassan Rouhani and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — both won seats in the assembly, along with 50 other of their allies. The vote for the 88-member Assembly of Experts was held at the same time as the country’s parliament elections. The final results of that vote were expected for later Monday.
Final results released by the Interior Ministry and broadcast on state TV show that reformists, who favor expanded social freedoms and engagement with the West, won at least 85 seats. Moderate conservatives, who also supported the nuclear agreement, won 73, giving the two camps a majority in the 290-seat assembly.
According to Iran’s Interior Ministry, which gave the final results for the clerical assembly, moderates won 59 percent of the seats in the body. And though it’s seen as a historic win for the moderates, several prominent hard-liners, including Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati have also been re-elected.
Hard-liners, who had opposed the deal, won just 68 seats, down from more than 100 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.
Jannati, who finished last in Tehran, is also the hard-line leader of the country’s Guardian Council, an unelected, constitutional watchdog that vets election candidates. He has been the most potent force to oppose democratic reforms and disqualify reformist candidates from the parliamentary balloting and also the clerical assembly vote. Jannati and his allies in the Guardian Council disqualified Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, from running in Friday’s vote.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said turnout was 62 percent.
The most surprising was the loss of seats on the clerical assembly for some prominent hard-liners, including Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the current Experts Assembly chief who was not re-elected.
Moderates also won a 59 percent 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.
Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, the spiritual leader of hard-liners and mentor of former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also lost his seat in the assembly.
President Hassan Rouhani and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, both considered moderates, retained their seats in the assembly, according to the Interior Ministry. However, several prominent hard-liners, including Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, have also been re-elected.
The Assembly of Experts serves a function similar to that of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals, and will someday have to pick a successor to Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It also can directly challenge Khamenei’s rule, something it has never done before.
Jannati is also the leader of the Guardian Council, an unelected, constitutional watchdog that vets election candidates. He has been a leading opponent of democratic reforms and has pressed for the disqualification of 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 is elected every eight years. After Khamenei, who is 76 years old, underwent prostate surgery in 2014, speculation renewed about the state of his health.
The Assembly of Experts is elected every eight years. Moderates previously held around 20 seats in the assembly.
Friday’s twin elections for parliament and the clerical assembly were the first to be held in Iran since it struck a landmark nuclear deal with world powers last year that brought about the lifting of crippling international sanctions.
The moderates previously held around 20 seats in the assembly and their win is seen as an expansion of their influence within the powerful body.
As for the parliament elections, none of Iran’s three main political camps — reformists, conservatives and hard-liners — is expected to win an outright majority in the 290-seat house but partial results so far indicate the best reformist showing in more than a decade.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
