Hard-liners dominate Iran's parliamentary election

The victory of hardliners in Iran’s March 1 low-turnout parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections will have implications for Tehran’s foreign policy and the selection of the next Supreme Leader.

Turnout hit a record low, with just 41% of eligible voters casting ballots, according to government figures many consider inflated. 

During the last parliamentary contest in 2020, there was a 42% turnout. This was in keeping with a trend line of diminished electoral enthusiasm in recent years owing to mass candidate disqualifications, disaffection with the Islamic Republic’s system of governance, and dismal state management.

The ascension of the victors in the election represented a further narrowing of the circle of power in Iran. Reformists like former President Mohammad Khatami have been effectively banished from significant positions in the Islamic Republic. 

Khatami never even received a post from the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after his presidency, in contrast with some of his predecessors. Pragmatists have also suffered. Former President Hassan Rouhani was disqualified from running for the Assembly of Experts, despite Rouhani having held a seat there since 2007, and like Khatami, he never received a post-presidential landing spot from Khamenei. Rouhani’s former justice and intelligence ministers were also disqualified.

Even longtime conservatives have suffered in this contest. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the current speaker of parliament, who was reelected, nevertheless finished in fourth-place in Tehran, which was a turnaround from Ghalibaf finishing in first-place in 2020. He won fewer votes than ultraconservatives Mahmoud Nabavian, young upstart Amir-Hossein Sabeti, who has been a television host on the state broadcaster IRIB, and Hamid Rasaee.

The current election will not change the fundamentals of the Islamic Republic’s policies or its relations with the United States. Structurally, parliament is subordinate to the decisions and political whims of the Supreme Leader and the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) on the most sensitive files, for example the nuclear program. 

However, the occupants of the speakership of parliament and the chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts will be important, given that the speaker is a standing member of the SNSC, and the chairman of the new Assembly of Experts may very well be in place when it is constitutionally tasked with selecting a successor to Khamenei, who turns 85 this year.