Ayatollah tightens grip on Iran following convincing poll victory

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tightened his grip on Iran’s faction-ridden politics after loyalists won more than 75 per cent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters – including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad – is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of the ayatollah in the governing hierarchy. Mr Ahmadinejad’s term ends in 2013 and he cannot run again under constitutional limits.

The outcome of Friday’s vote, essentially a contest between conservative hardline factions with reformist leaders under house arrest, will have no big impact on Iranian foreign policy, notably its nuclear stand-off with the West. But it will boost Khamenei’s influence in next year’s presidential election.

With 90 per cent of ballot boxes counted last night, Khamenei acolytes were expected to occupy more than three-quarters of the 290 seats in parliament.

In the race for the 30 seats in the capital, Tehran, a tally of preliminary returns showed Khamenei supporters had taken 19 and pro-Ahmadinejad candidates the rest.

Pro-Khamenei candidates won in the Shiite holy cities of Qom and Mashhad, and led in other major provincial centres, including Isfahan and Tabriz, where over 90 per cent of voters backed Ahmadinejad in the 2009 parliamentary election. Khamenei loyalists also appear to have swept up about 70 per cent of seats in rural regions – hitherto bastions of Mr Ahmadinejad.

Officials reported a turnout of 64 per cent, suspiciously high given widespread voter apathy reported beforehand.