The Latest: Iranian moderates win majority in parliament

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-latest-iranian-moderates-win-majority-in-parliament/2016/02/29/aa2d732c-dee0-11e5-8c00-8aa03741dced_story.html

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TEHRAN, Iran — The Latest on Iran’s parliamentary elections (all times local):

4 p.m.

Final election results released by Iran’s Interior Ministry show that moderates have won a majority in parliament.

The results broadcast Monday by state TV show that reformists, who favor expanded social freedoms and engagement with the West, won at least 85 seats, while moderate conservatives won 73 seats. Together, they have a majority in the 290-seat assembly.

Hard-liners, who had adamantly opposed last summer’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers, won just 68 seats.

Five seats will go to religious minorities, and the remaining 59 will be decided in a runoff, likely to be held in April.

Iran’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said turnout was 62 percent.

The elections were the first to be held since the finalization of the nuclear agreement, which lifted international sanctions in exchange for Tehran curbing its atomic program.

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11:10 a.m.

Iran’s moderates have dealt another blow to the country’s hard-liners, winning the majority of seats in last week’s vote for the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body empowered with choosing the nation’s supreme leader.

Top 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 on Monday. It says 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.

Assembly chief, hard-line Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, was not re-elected.

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