Iran election: Reformists win all 30 Tehran seats

[Rob L 3,811]

Allies of Iran's reformist President Hassan Rouhani have won a landslide victory in Tehran, in the first parliamentary vote since Iran signed a nuclear deal with world powers.

With 90% of the votes counted, the pro-Rouhani List of Hope is set to take all 30 parliamentary seats in the capital.

The leading conservative candidate Gholamali Haddad-Adel is in 31st place.

Millions voted on Friday to elect the 290-seat parliament as well as members of the Assembly of Experts.

The 88-member assembly appoints Iran's Supreme Leader and might end up choosing a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 76 and has suffered ill-health.

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Early results gave former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate conservative, and Mr Rouhani the most votes for the assembly, which is composed of mostly elder and senior clerics.

Analysis: Lyse Doucet, BBC News international correspondent

This stunning election result will make a difference in Iran's engagement with the wider world.

President Rouhani's hand has been strengthened in parliament to help open his country to greater trade and investment. That will help him, and others in his reformist camp, to deepen the dialogue with the West, which began with negotiations on a landmark nuclear deal.

But much of this opening will continue to be with Europe, rather than the US. Iran's relationship with America is still complex and controversial.

Iran's ambitions in the region are also deeply rooted - it has strategic interests in countries like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon as well as Afghanistan, and a strong sense of its right to remain engaged. These are areas where Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards and its conservative Supreme leader hold sway.

But Iran wants to be regarded as an equal partner, able to sit at the world's top tables to work on common threats like the so-called Islamic State. President Rouhani's team may now feel empowered to engage a bit more, more often.

What is the Assembly of Experts?

The parliamentary result in Tehran is significant because lawmakers from the capital usually determine the political direction of the house, analysts say.

However, reformists look to have done less well in constituencies outside the capital.

Image copyrightAPImage captionThe economy has been a key issue in these elections

Mr Rouhani said on Saturday that the election gave the government more credibility and clout.

"The competition is over. It's time to open a new chapter in Iran's economic development based on domestic abilities and international opportunities," the official Irna news agency quoted him as saying.

"The people showed their power once again and gave more credibility and strength to their elected government."

Voting was extended three times on Friday as crowds reportedly flocked to polling stations. Turnout was more than 60%.

Reformists, who want better relations with the outside world and more freedoms at home, were hoping to gain influence in the conservative-dominated bodies.

But of 12,000 people who registered as candidates, only half were allowed to stand, including just 200 moderates.

This was the first election to be held since last year's deal between Iran and world powers over the country's nuclear programme and the lifting of sanctions.

BBC Persian's Ali Hamedani says the economy was a key issue in the process.

With sanctions lifted and Western investors beginning to return to Iran, there are high hopes for an improvement in daily life, he says.

Reformists and moderates say they are targeting greater foreign investment which, our correspondent says, will create jobs for young people.

Related Topics

• Iran

Edited February 28, 2016 by Rob L

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I am guessing that since Obama might just have been right in how he chose to deal with Iran this thread is going to gather some serious cobwebs.

[ExPatty 502]

I am guessing that since Obama might just have been right in how he chose to deal with Iran this thread is going to gather some serious cobwebs.

It could also be that 99% of us don't really know anything about iranian politics. All I know is their last election was a sham and npr said this one seems a lot more legit. That's all I know and it hit that point at which I figured I knew enough about it, so onto something else now

As for obama being right on iran we're unlikely to know for several years.

[Teddy B 17,252]

I am guessing that since Obama might just have been right in how he chose to deal with Iran this thread is going to gather some serious cobwebs.

Obama is weak! Putin is real man!

[ExPatty 502]

Obama is weak! Putin is real man!

[lostinblue 1,989]

Praise for “Moderate” Victory in Iran Elections Ignores Disqualified Reformers & Dissidents

by TheTower.org Staff |

02.29.16 11:05 am

Western media reports indicating that moderates won last week’s Iranian elections belie the fact that nearly 99 percent of all reformers were disqualified from running.

The Wall Street Journal pointed this out in an editorial (Google link) Monday:

At stake Friday were seats in the Majlis, or Parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, the body that will select Iran’s next Supreme Leader. Like all Iranian elections, the vote was a carefully stage-managed process. Iranians picked from among candidates prescreened for ideological orthodoxy by the unelected Guardian Council and various security agencies.

The Guardians disqualified 6,000, or nearly half, of the original candidates to the Majlis. Of the 801 candidates to the Assembly of Experts, only a quarter, or 161, made it to the ballot. Most of the disqualified candidates belonged to the reformist and moderate factions of the regime. Imagine U.S. midterm elections in which the White House was able to ban all Tea Party or even nonprogressive Democratic candidates from the ballot.

The Journal also noted that the terms “moderate” and “reformer” may not mean the same thing in Iran as they do in the West.

Consider Mostafa Kavakebian. The General Secretary of Iran’s Democratic Party, Mr. Kavakebian is projected to enter the Majlis as a member for Tehran. In a 2008 speech he said: “The people who currently reside in Israel aren’t humans, and this region is comprised of a group of soldiers and occupiers who openly wage war on the people.”

Another moderate is Kazem Jalali, who previously served as the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Majlis and is projected to have won a seat. In 2011 Mr. Jalali said his committee “demands the harshest punishment”—meaning the death penalty—for Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two leaders of the pro-democracy Green Movement that was bloodily suppressed after stolen elections in 2009. Those two leaders are still under house arrest.

The mass disqualifications also meant that there were too few real reform candidates to run, so lists of reformers claimed non-reform candidates as their own. Saeed Ghasseminejad, a former Iranian dissident who is now an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explained:

In an analysis of the election published Monday in Bloomberg View, Eli Lake noted that some of those who were on the reformist list were actually opposed to the reformists.

These include Ayatollah Ali Movahedi Kermani, who defended the Guardian Council’s vetting process against the reformists; as well as Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri, who told reporters “I believe that the correct way is Principalist, and the way of others, like Reformists or moderates, is the incorrect way.”

Even when Iran’s reform movement was at its peak during the 1997-2005 presidential tenure of Mohammed Khatami, those who advocated for more openness in the government found their initiatives blocked by “unelected institutions” like the Guardian Council. When a new reform movement emerged before the 2009 elections, its leaders were arrested, and anti-regime protests in the wake of likely election fraud were brutally put down. But now, Lake wrote, “many of the hardliners that opposed the reformists in the late 1990s and in 2009 are running under [the reform] banner.”

Lake gave a specific example of how what passes for a reformer in Iran have changed in a column last week:

To understand the degree of Iran’s political stagnation, consider this bit of history. When Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was president of Iran in the 1990s, the journalist Akbar Ganji documented Rafsanjani’s role in the murder of dissidents and intellectuals. In 2013, Ganji — who is himself living in exile — endorsed Rafsanjani for the presidency, in part because the choices were already so narrowed by the unelected part of the Iranian state.

The New York Times’ Tehran correspondent, Thomas Erdbrink, called the results a “a landslide victory for reformist and moderate allies of President Hassan Rouhani” on Monday. But just last week, Erdbrink reported on a pre-election rally by reformists who acknowledged that “the forced absence of most of their political leaders illustrated how far they were from their goal of a new and modern Iran.”

http://www.thetower.org/3021-praise-for-moderate-victory-in-iran-elections-ignores-disqualified-reformers-dissidents/

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I don't know but I'm still thinking this is progress for Iran. Yes 'moderate' for Iranian politics is very different from the Western ideal but I see hope for a much less fractious relationship and this would be a baby step. No doubt that the crazies are still running the show, but better is better.

While I generally side towards Israel, I think that many Israeli leaders and individuals share the reverse contempt for Palestinians in particular and Muslims in general.