Iran: Hardliners also win parliamentary run-off election

Iran's hardliners have clearly won the run-off election for the remaining 45 of 290 parliamentary seats - as expected.

The "principlist" faction secured 10 of the 16 remaining seats for the capital Tehran, the Interior Ministry and media reports said.

The remaining six seats went to the Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces (SHANA), which is also categorized as hard line.

The two hardliner factions thus have 29 of the 30 seats in the politically most important constituency of Tehran.

Only the former Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki - not a hardliner, but an arch-conservative - made it into parliament without being a member of either faction.

This means that the next legislative period, which according to the Interior Ministry starts on June 27, will also be dominated by a majority of hardliners loyal to the regime.

There are also more than 40 independent and moderate candidates in the next parliament. However, according to observers, as in the last four years, they will not have much influence on legislative decisions. The majority of the remaining seats in the provinces also went to hardliners.

The result was not surprising, as most independent and opposition candidates were not even allowed to take part in the election. The Guardian Council, which is responsible for the ideological suitability of candidates, had already banned them from running months before the vote. Accordingly, the way was clear for the pro-regime factions and their candidates.

The leading candidate of the principlist faction, Hamid Rasaee, was the big winner of the first round of elections in March. Critics in the country accuse the faction, and Rasaee in particular, of holding Islamist, anti-Semitic and misogynist views and thus of pursuing an even more radical course than before.

There was no information yet on voter turnout. However, observers expected another low turnout. Some critics of the system even claimed on social media that the turnout in Tehran, a metropolis of millions, was less than 8%. Voter turnout in the first round was 41% nationwide, the lowest since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.