Al-Jazeera Net-Tehran

Iranian circles expected that there will be no significant impact on Tehran's foreign policy after the conservatives took control of the 11th parliament, while the conservative and reformist rival factions exchanged accusations of working to undermine popular participation in the recent elections.

On Sunday, Iranian election commission spokesman Ismail Mousavi announced the final results of the vote counting in the 11 legislative elections, as it showed near-absolute control of the conservative current (221 seats) over the next parliament so far, compared to 16 seats for the reformists and 34 for independents.

The second round, scheduled for April 18, is scheduled to settle the remaining 19 seats.

According to the list of winners for the Greater Tehran constituency, members of the "Council of the Revolutionary Forces" led by former Tehran mayor and losing presidential candidate Muhammad Baqir Qalibaf have secured all 30 seats out of 290.

According to the official results, all the candidates for the "building cadres" and "Alliance for Iran" reformist lists in Tehran who chose to run in the legislative race outside the framework of the Supreme Council's decision to formulate the reform front policies failed.

The Reform Council had decided not to launch any electoral list in the capital, Tehran, due to the Guardians ’Council rejecting the eligibility of most of its candidates, stressing that it respected the decision of the parties under its burden to contest the electoral race alone without belonging to it.

Observers in Iran are of the opinion that obtaining all the members of the conservative list all seats in Tehran foreshadows a strong return of the conservative movement to the political scene in the Islamic Republic.

The conservative list led by Qalibaf took control of all seats in Tehran (Iranian press)

Foreign Policy
Abbas Aslani, the researcher at the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies, who suggested that the government of President Hassan Rouhani is likely to be pressured for the remainder of its life by the competing current - that the next parliament, although it will make vigorous endeavors to influence foreign policy, will have limited impact, indeed, It will support what the government went on regarding regional issues, including support for the resistance axis, and the conservative parliament will work to strengthen Iran's defense capabilities.

As for the influence of the conservative parliament on Tehran's relations with Western powers - especially the United States - Aslani believes that things will go for an escalation, and that the next parliament will eliminate any opportunity for direct dialogue with Washington, but he ruled out that the Iranian Foreign Ministry might face pressure on its policies with European countries.

With regard to Iranian relations with Russia and China, he said that the decision of the alliance with Moscow and Beijing had been taken at the highest levels in the country, and that he saw no room to violate it, and it was likely that the country would witness a parliamentary movement to go east more than before.

Aslani expected that the conservatives in the next parliament will press the government to pressure the European troika and urge them to fulfill their obligations in the nuclear agreement, as he does not rule out that the next parliament will work to get Iran out of the NPT, knowing that such a decision is taken at the highest levels And there is no difference between a reformist parliament or a conservative in this area.

Aslani expects that the effect of the next parliament on Iran's foreign policy will be limited (Al Jazeera Net)

Popular participation
For his part, Iranian Interior Minister Abdul-Ridha Rahmani Fadli announced that the participation rate in the elections reached 42% in the country, while the percentage in Tehran was 25%, adding that the number of voters reached 24 million out of 58 million eligible to vote.

The participation rate showed a significant decline compared to the previous legislative elections, as it reached 62% in all parts of the country, and about 50% in the capital, where 34 million eligible voters, numbering 54 million, participated in it.

Reformists and conservatives have traded accusations of undermining popular participation as the biggest manifestation of democracy.

For its part, the secretary of the Supreme Council for the Reform of the Reform Front policies, Ather Mansouri, accused the Guardian Council, which is affiliated with the conservative trend, of undermining popular participation by excluding candidates from two-thirds of the reformist parties and denying them the right to run in the legislative race.

In her interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Mansouri considered that the most important factor that urged voters to vote in the last elections was the true "competition" between political currents, especially in Tehran, the most influenced by Iranian politics, and said that the recent elections were far from the ingredients of real competition.

On the other hand, Hussein Kanaani, the conservative politician, Secretary-General of the "Sabz" party, blamed the Corona Virus as part of the responsibility for declining popular participation, and blamed the rival current by frustrating the people's hope through its poor performance to solve the economic and living problems.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Kanaani said that the decline in popular participation was expected even before the launch of the propaganda campaigns, but it is not possible to deny the role of news that spoke about the spread of the Corona virus in the country before entering the country in the stage of electoral silence.