Hardliners fail to sweep Iran vote, Candidates allied to Ahmadinejad have failed to sweep the polls
Candidates allied to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, have failed to score a resounding victory over moderate forces in twin Iranian elections, according to initial results.
Voting for the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses the supreme leader, and the Tehran city council concluded on Saturday.
Centrist cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani appeared to have sprung a surprise by reaping more votes than a hardline rival in the election for the Assembly of Experts.
In the Tehran city council, reformists were on course to take a handful of seats and end total conservative domination.
In Tehran city itself, Rafsanjani was more than 400,000 votes ahead of the second placed cleric, the ISNA news agency reported, citing official figures.
His popularity appears to have been helped by a growing alliance with reformists, such as Mohammad Khatami, a former president.
…Moderates were a strong force under Khatami’s presidency, when at one point reformists dominated parliament and local councils.
The reformists reached their lowest ebb in the 2005 presidential election, when their candidates went out in the first round.
Do we have any experts in the audience who can interpret the meaning of this election?
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