Support for Iran’s president falls away

SUPPORTERS of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been reduced to a small fraction of Iran’s legislature, outnumbered by the conservatives who once backed him but then turned against him after he was perceived to challenge the authority of top clerics, results from a runoff parliamentary election announced yesterday show.

Iran has touted the turnout for Friday’s vote as a show of support for the country’s religious leadership in their confrontation with the West over Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

The result is also a new humiliation for Ahmadinejad, whose political decline started last year with his bold but failed challenge on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the choice of intelligence chief.

While usually in agreement with the conservatives on foreign policy and many other issues, he had tried to change the rules of the political game in the Islamic Republic, where the president and legislature are subordinate to religious figures like Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad’s opponents had already won an outright majority in the 290-member legislature in the first round of voting in March. Of 65 seats up for grabs in Friday’s runoff election, Ahmadinejad’s opponents won 41, while the president’s supporters took only 13 seats. Independents won 11, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency yesterday.

The president’s supporters had their best showing in the capital Tehran. Ahmadinejad’s conservative critics won 16 seats while his supporters nine.

The parliament will begin its sessions in late May. It has no direct control over key foreign and security policy matters like Iran’s nuclear programme, but it can influence those policies and the run-up to the election of Ahmadinejad’s successor.