The Parliamentary Elections in Iran

The 290 members of the Iranian Parliament are being chosen today, representing the largest electoral process since 2009, which reelected the current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009, followed by the mass protests after that.


Iran has an important lack of democracy, and these elections don't mean any trial of change (unfortunately), but it may shape the political landscape for a sucessor for Ahmadinejad, in 2013. This is an opportunity to see how is the level of legitimacy of the present political regime, mainly regarding the increasing of the international isolation due to nuclear program.

From early morning, state TV and media showed long queues of people waiting to cast their ballot. More than 48 million Iranians are eligible to vote at the nearly 47.000 polling stations across the nation. But this news about the participation in the ballot is suspect to be false. In the end of the day, public channels were announcing the extention of the time to vote for more 4 hours, because of " the voter's enthusiasm". Nevertheless, all the international journalists haven't seen it. They were banished to follow the elections, and what they could see was just a few people making a kind of "crowd" in front of the cameras, while in the other casts there was nobody. That's a possible reason for the "extention" of the vote period.

In the absence of major reformist parties, which were kicked off the political stage over the 2009 post-election riots, Friday's vote is seen as a political battleground for competing conservative factions that support the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and those backing Ahmadinejad.

The two top conservative groups, which were once united, have turned against each other after crushing reformists in the upheavals that followed Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

The vote is also a curtain raiser for next year's presidential election. A defeat for Ahmadinejad supporters would virtually guarantee a Khamenei loyalist as the next president and present a seamless front against Western efforts to curb Iran's uranium enrichment program.

A strong showing on Friday for Ahmadinejad's backers would throw him a political lifeline and the chance to exert some influence over the next presidential election. Anything less would be a slap to Ahmadinejad and assure the next presidency goes to a Khamenei loyalist.


Iran's parliament carries more powers than most elected bodies in the Middle East, including setting budgets and having influential advisory committees such as national security and foreign affairs. The current parliament is led by a former nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.


The abstention in the ballot would mean the weakness of Ahmadinejad. But not a change for the country.