By IPS Correspondents
TEHRAN, Dec 21 2006 (IPS)

In two key elections, one for the influential Assembly of Experts and the other for city and village councils nationwide, Iranians have voted for moderation and reforms, delivering a shock to the hardline administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Results for the Assembly, announced Thursday, showed massive support for Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a candidate backed by both moderate-conservative and pro-reform parties, who claimed more than a million and a half votes in Tehran – half a million more than his nearest rival.

Rafsanjani, who served as president of Iran from 1989 to 1997, lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential runoff but has continued to be influential and chairs the Expediency Council, another powerful body.

Tellingly, prominent hardliner and Ahmadinejad&#39s mentor Ayatollah Mesba Yazdi fell to the sixth position, winning less than half the votes cast in Rafsanjani&#39s favour.

The results are widely expected to tone down Ahmadinejad&#39s strident anti-West stance. This is especially so since the turnout for the assembly elections was quite high, ranging from 47 percent in Tehran province to 83 percent in the southwestern province of Ilam. Only 164 candidates were qualified to run for the 86 Assembly seats nationwide.

"Pro-reforms candidates were meticulously vetted out by the hardline dominated Guardian Council and bearing in mind that those pro-reforms parties that did offer an electoral list had very little choice, mostly between hardline and conservative or moderate conservatives, the results can be seen as victory even by pro-reforms," a political analyst in Tehran told IPS, asking not to be quoted by name.

Outside Iran, Ahmadinejad is best known for his confrontational stance against the West and the United States, especially over a nuclear energy programme that is widely believed to have a weapons edge and his anti-Israel statements.

The Experts Assembly is a powerful but largely latent body of 86 clerics who are invested with the power to choose and supervise the country&#39s supreme leader (vali faghih) or depose him if he is found incompetent. In 1990 the assembly chose Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei to succeed the revolution&#39s father, Ayatollah Khomeini, within hours of the latter&#39s death.

The Assembly seats, held mainly by conservatives, were targeted by hardline clerics led by Yazdi who hoped for a majority that could bag them the speakership, and greater control in choosing a new leader, should the need arise.

The speakership of the Assembly is now going to remain with its present speaker, the conservative Ayatollah Meshkini, who is very ill and is said to have run in the elections only to siphon votes from Rafsanjani, who is already its vice-speaker besides being chairman of Expediency Council.

Several pro-reform parties and groups, including former president Mohammad Khatami&#39s Association of Militant Clerics, had abstained from offering an electoral list for the assembly to protest against extensive vetting of the candidates by the Guardian Council.

Nearly all pro-reform candidates, even incumbent members of the Assembly, were disqualified by the Council and in some provinces only one candidate was left to contest. There were four major lists, all overlapping, put forth by hardliners, traditional conservatives, moderate conservatives and the reformist Etemad Melli party.

The hardliners&#39 list shared only three names with the one put forth by the traditionally conservative Society of Militant Clergy and Society of Qom Seminary Instructors, the most important difference between the two being exclusion in the hardliners&#39 list of Rafsanjani and Hasan Rohani, Iran&#39s chief nuclear negotiator in Khatami&#39s administration.

Both men are pragmatist moderate conservatives and inclined towards reforms. But in the presidential elections last year neither candidate could make it in the first round.

The reformists&#39 claim that the very high number of votes received by Rafsanjani in the Assembly of Experts election indicated voter preference has angered hardliners. The pro-hardline Keyhan newspaper&#39s editor called this a ridiculous argument in an editorial, and in spite of the fact that Rafansjani&#39s name had been excluded from hardliners&#39 list, argued that the extra votes had come from "The Principled" (hardline) masses.

Responding to this claim, Jomhuri Eslami, one of the country&#39s oldest conservative newspapers, said in an editorial that the votes were Rafansanjani&#39s own and owed nothing to "The Principled". The paper called hardliners a power-thirsty radical group that are a potential threat to the Supreme Leader and the system. "Defending (Islamic) principles is becoming a tool in the hands of the power-thirsty," the editor wrote.

"Suffering the loss of the single seat of Qom to a conservative in spite of a high-voltage campaign was a great blow to hardliners. Qom, with all its religious seminaries, is their bastion. In Mashad, another very important religious centre, they weren&#39t even able to secure one of the five available seats. And in Tehran, the top of their list didn&#39t even make it," a pro-reform political observer who did not want to be named told IPS.

"The loss in Qom and Mashad can mean that the majority of the clergy and seminary students, let alone the ordinary people, prefer conservatism, if not reformism, to hardline politics. I believe even the Supreme Leader himself must be very pleased with these results. An Assembly with a conservative majority poses no challenge to him while a hardline dominated one could be much less predictable and potentially dangerous," he added.

"It is true that Mesbah Yazdi and some of his supporters will remain in the assembly but the results of this election will greatly weaken their faction. They will have to wait another eight years for any prospect of a majority in the Assembly. And considering Meshkini&#39s illness and old age, speakership of the Assembly is most likely go to Hashemi (Rafsanjani), sooner or later," he added.

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