Iranian moderates win majority on clerical assembly, split parliament

When final results are reported later Monday, Iran's moderates are expected to have their best showing in parliamentary elections in at least a decade, dealing a defeat to the hard-liners who control the 290-seat body currently. But the moderates scored a potentially more important victory, taking 59 percent of the seats on the 88-member Assembly of Experts, Iran's Interior Ministry said Monday. The Assembly, a clerical advisory committee elected every eight years, is charged with picking Iran's supreme leader; the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 76 and underwent treatment for prostate cancer in 2014.

Among the 52 moderate clerics elected to the Assembly of Experts, formerly dominated by the hard-liners, are President Hassan Rouhani and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Some prominent hard-liners also won re-election, including Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, but others were voted out, including outgoing Assembly chief Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mentor Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi. The Assembly of Experts can also directly challenge the supreme leader's rule, The Associated Press reports, but has never done so. Neither hard-liners, conservatives, nor moderates are expected to win a majority in parliament.

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