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Election tallies reflect split in Iran’s politics
Hard-liners fall in Tehran but do well in rural sites
In Tehran, the daily Shargh newspaper Sunday featured pictures of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with the headline “Decisive victory for the reformists.’’ (ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/European Pressphoto agency)
By Thomas Erdbrink
New York Times

TEHRAN — A day after results in the capital showed a landslide victory for reformist and moderate allies of President Hassan Rouhani in Iran’s parliamentary elections, state television Sunday reported a nationwide triumph for hard-liners.

The English-language state news channel, Press TV, echoed forecasts by media organizations affiliated with the hard-liners, saying that their candidates had won decisively outside the major city centers.

But, as final nationwide results had not been announced, it remained unclear how the hard-liners had done.

In Tehran, where results are official, the urban middle classes voted in large numbers for the combined list of reformers and moderates that support Rouhani. In other large cities, many reformists also won.

While Iran’s eight biggest cities make up more than half the country’s population, they control only 57 of the 290 seats in Parliament.

Provincial reports suggest that of the first 185 districts reporting nationwide, 55 have gone to reformists, 66 to moderate conservatives and 64 to hard-liners, the Associated Press said. The Interior Ministry, which controls the vote-counting, said official results were expected Monday for the rest of the country. About 30 million Iranians voted Friday in what was actually two elections: for a new Parliament and for an influential clerical council.

The elections were the first since the completion of an international deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program that included the lifting of sanctions against the country, a deal supported by the reformist camp and opposed by hard-liners. Voter turnout for the two contests exceeded 60 percent, according to Iran’s Interior Ministry.

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.

Moderate conservatives also gained seats in this election, and if their tentative coalition with the reformists holds, they could end the domination of Parliament by hard-liners.

On Sunday, the Interior Ministry said that the one hard-liner who had initially seemed to have secured one of the 30 parliamentary seats for Tehran, had not made the threshold.

The candidate, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, is a former speaker of Parliament whose daughter is married to a son of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now all seats in Tehran have gone to the reformist-moderate list, a significant gain.

Hard-liners close to Khamenei have cautioned against allowing the nuclear accord and its promised economic benefits to weaken Iran’s resolve to resist Western influences.

It is, of course, still unclear how many seats the antireform candidates will ultimately win. But a robust minority of reformers and moderates could help Rouhani implement economic reforms after the lifting of nuclear sanctions in January, analysts say.

“All these people, the majority of the eligible voters, have spoken out against the hard-liners,’’ said Saeed Laylaz, a progovernment activist and economist. He predicted that many of the independent candidates would end up supporting Rouhani. “Clearly his power and influence have now increased.’’

The ministry also said that in the election for the clerical Assembly of Experts, two influential hard-line clerics had failed to make the threshold.

One, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the incumbent head of the assembly, whose 88 members are tasked with supervising the supreme leader, failed to get enough votes in Tehran. Another, Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, 81, who was often called the spiritual father of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also failed to win reelection.

The top vote-getter in Tehran was former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former chief of the council. A statement from his office said: “No one is able to resist against the will of the majority of the people and whoever the people don’t want has to step aside.’’

Rouhani, who came in third in the Tehran vote for the Assembly of Experts, also issued a statement praising the elections. “The people showed their power once again and gave more credibility and strength to their elected government,’’ he said, adding he would work with anyone who won election to build a future for Iran.

Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, called the vote ‘‘proof of democracy’’ at work in Iran.