PHOTO: Newly-elected reformist MP Fatemeh Hussein with her son


A correspondent in Isfahan writes for EA:


The results of Friday’s Parliamentary elections in Iran have washed away all the sadness and wounds that the controversial 2009 Presidential vote left for the reformist and centrist movement.

Who could believe that the best-known figures in Tehran among conservatives, also known as principlists, would lose and not get into Parliament? Who would think that they would give way to new faces in Iranian politics?

This outcome clearly shows the depth of people’s trust in the leaders of the reformist movement. It was this trust that meant the centrist-reformist List of Hope swept all 30 seats in Tehran. It was this that meant more than 20 newcomers will now sit in the Majlis.

Perhaps now, President Rouhani will have more confidence and strength to pursue the national reconciliation plan that he and former President Hashemi Rafsanjani — who led the list of candidates in Tehran for the Assembly of Experts — had proposed after the 2009 election.

Principlists who were happy with being in power had no interest in that national reconciliation. However, this result shows that masses of Iranians support it. Though it is unlikely that many principlists and hardliners will immediately take the lesson from their defeat, they might reflect on how — despite their fame and power, and despite a Guardian Council which tried to disqualify their opposition — the voters preferred a new type of politician.

They might then realize that it is time to take a constructive step towards political and social measures to bring together Iranians, rather than persist in the denunciations and repression that divide them.