Iran's Guardian Council validated on Saturday the long-awaited parliamentary results of the 30-member Tehran constituency, giving 26 seats to reformists and two to conservatives. The two remaining seats will be decided in run-off elections in November.
When the majlis holds its inaugural session on May 27th, supporters of the liberal President Muhammad Khatami will control a decisive majority of the 248 seats.
This is the first time the conservatives have lost control of the legislature since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The 12-member council ratified the results after the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the mentor of the conservative camp, called for a halt to repeated recounts and insisted on an endorsement of most of the original results.
The candidate who won the largest number of votes is the president's brother, Mr Muhammad Reza Khatami, who heads the reformists' electoral front. In second place Ms Jamila Kadivar, wife of the Culture Minister, Mr Ataollah Mohajerani, whom conservatives have tried and failed to impeach for granting press freedom. Ironically, the candidate who took fourth place was Mr Hadi Khamenei, the reformist brother of the Supreme Guide.
The council exacted a price for conceding victory to the reformists. The former president, Mr Hashemi Rafsanjani, was moved from 30th to 20th place to improve his chances of securing the speakership of the majlis. While he is, perhaps unjustly, blamed by many Iranians for the failings and abuses of the past 20 years of clerical rule, Mr Rafsanjani could just win if the reformist camp remains divided between his two rivals.
The first is a stalwart of the president's party, Mr Behzad Nabavi, the second, Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi of the leftist "Imam's Line" grouping allied to the reformists.
While the struggle between conservatives and reformists over representation in parliament has come to an end, the battle for control continues.
