While conservatives gained the vote overall, within their ranks lie the divisions essential to understanding Iranian politics, writes Mustafa El-Labbad The preliminary results of Iran's Islamic Majlis, or parliament, elections show the conservatives ahead with 70 per cent of the vote. The reformists and independents, many of who were barred from the elections, won approximately 30 per cent of the seats. Since the Iranian Revolution, Iran has been going to the polls nearly once a year, electing presidents and parliamentarians and voting in various referendums -- a sign of the regime's eagerness to prove that its legitimacy comes from the ballot box. To understand what happened in the recent elections, one has to think beyond the usual terms of "conservatives" and "reformists". Iran has many types of conservatives, and although they generally stick together, their interests may not always match. At present, the reformist camp includes supporters of former President Mohamed Khatami, including the Participation Front Party of his brother, Mohamed-Reza Khatami. Other reformist groups include those rallying around former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Kharroubi and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. The conservatives, meanwhile, include the hardline United Fundamentalist Front, which is loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Former National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani, former presidential candidate Mohamed Baqer Qalibaf, and former Revolutionary Guard Commander Mohsen Razai also have strong support within the conservative alliance. Larijani and others have been campaigning against President Ahmadinejad in the recent elections, pointing most to the failure of his economic policies, which led to heightened inflation and widespread unemployment. Therefore it is misleading to describe the elections as a victory for the conservatives in general. What transpired during the elections was a power struggle pitting the hardline current of Ahmadinejad against pragmatic conservatives such as Larijani and Qalibaf. In this power struggle, Ahmadinejad called on the help of the Revolutionary Guard, while the pragmatists enjoyed the support of the clerics. While the reformists managed to maintain their parliamentary share of 50 seats (out of 250), they are unlikely to be able to influence policy in the manner they had hoped for. The reason the reformists are so underrepresented in parliament is that the country's Guardian Council banned many of their candidates from running for election. Right now, any real challenge to the authority of President Ahmadinejad will come from Ali Larijani and his pragmatic conservative supporters, not the reformists. In other words, the ongoing rivalry is between Larijani and the clerics on the one hand and Ahmadinejad and Revolutionary Guard on the other. Partners in power as they are, these two conservative factions have developed their own separate agendas and aims. Their rivalry is bound to influence the shape of Iranian politics for some time to come. And a shift of power from the extreme right to the centrist right is not to be ruled out. Much will depend, however, on who emerges as the next parliamentary speaker. The current speaker, Haddad-Adel, is a supporter of Ahmadinejad. Should he keep his job, Ahmadinejad supporters would be likely to dominate the scene. However, should he be ousted by Ali Larijani, the latter would be in a position to challenge Ahmadinejad in next year's presidential elections.
