Moderates and reformists have dealt another blow to Iran’s hardliners, winning all but one of the seats for Tehran in the Assembly of Experts. President Hassan Rouhani and his allies won 15 out of the capital’s 16 seats on the clerical body, which may choose the country’s next supreme leader.
Two leading hardline clerics, assembly chairman Mohammad Yazdi and Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, lost their seats. The only hardliner to make the cut in Friday’s polls was Ahmad Jannati.
The vote for the 88-member Assembly of Experts was held on the same day as the country’s Parliamentary elections, in which moderates and reformists won all 30 of Tehran’s seats.
Partial results from elsewhere in the country are mixed, with hardliners so far winning 153 seats in the 290-seat parliament and moderates and reformists 111. The final results of that vote are expected later today.