Relative moderates win majority on key Iran leadership body

Two leading conservative clerics, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi and Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, have lost their seats on Iran’s top supervisory body, results from last week’s election confirmed on Monday.

Top relative moderates — President Hassan Rouhani and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — both won seats in the assembly, along with 50 other allies. The vote for the 88-member Assembly of Experts was held at the same time as the country’s parliament elections.

Iran’s Interior Ministry announced the final results for the clerical assembly. It said moderates won 59 percent of the seats. And though it’s seen as a historic win for the moderates, several prominent hard-liners have also been re-elected.

The reformist alliance formed in support of Rouhani had campaigned against both Yazdi, the outgoing chairman of the Assembly of Experts, and Mesbah-Yazdi, an outspoken opponent of the reformists.

But a third conservative, Ahmad Jannati, who had been targeted by the pro-Rouhani coalition, narrowly kept his seat on the assembly, a powerful committee that oversees the work of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, state television reported.

Jannati, who chairs the conservative-dominated Guardian Council, which must confirm the results of Friday’s elections for both the assembly and for parliament, came 16th in Tehran, and scraped the last of the capital’s 16 assembly seats.

Verification of the result is not expected for several days.

The election to the 88-member Assembly of Experts is important because it will pick Khamenei’s successor if he dies during its eight-year term.

Rouhani placed third in polling for the assembly in Tehran, while his key ally Rafsanjani took first place.