Conservatives to Dominate New Iran Parliament

Iran's new parliament will be largely dominated by conservatives who support supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to latest results Monday of last week's election.

The parliament, also known as the Majlis, will have about half of its current members replaced by newcomers, many of whom ran on an "independent" ticket.

But the complex structure of Iran's politics and the uncertainty over factional allegiances and personal alliances make it difficult to predict the equilibrium of the newly elected lawmakers, who are divided between supporters and critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to official figures on the Majlis website, 224 parliamentary seats out of 290 have been filled through Friday's election while 63 others, including 25 in the capital, will be decided in a run-off vote.

The fate of three other seats remains unknown.

The largely marginalized reformists, who had mainly boycotted the elections, lost most of their seats, only hanging on to 19 out of their 60 in the current parliament.

The elections saw two major conservative factions, one bringing together Ahmadinejad's supporters and the other his opponents, battling for the control over the new parliament.

But neither the United Conservatives Front, critical of the president, nor the pro-Ahmadinejad Front of Islamic Iran's Resistance managed to establish themselves as majority, according to a compilation of the results by AFP.

The United Front, led by incumbent speaker Ali Larijani, won 43 seats, while the Resistance introduced 10 lawmakers to a parliament scheduled to open on May 26.

But 54 candidates presented by both factions were also elected. There are no indications as which party they would choose to support. The same uncertainty prevails for 89 "independent" candidates, whose allegiances remain unknown.

A small anti-Ahmadinejad conservative faction, Voice of the Nation, managed to win two seats.

And finally five seats returned to the three main religious minorities -- Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians -- recognized by the Islamic republic.

The interior ministry declared a voter turnout of more than 64 percent -- significantly higher than the 55 percent recorded in the last parliamentary elections in 2008 -- as a victory for Iran.