Ahmadinejad rivals rout president in Iran runoff

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Fox News:

 

TEHRAN, IRAN – Supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been reduced to a small fraction in Iran's legislature, hugely outnumbered by the conservatives who once backed him but then turned against him after he was perceived to challenge the authority of top clerics, according to final results from a runoff parliamentary election announced Saturday.

Iran has touted the turnout for Friday's vote as a show of support for the country's religious leadership in their confrontation with the West over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.

The result is also a new humiliation for Ahmadinejad, whose political decline started last year with his bold but failed challenge of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the choice of intelligence chief.

While usually in agreement with the conservatives on foreign policy and many other issues, he had tried to change the rules of the political game in the Islamic Republic, where the president and legislature are subordinate to religious figures like Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad's opponents had already won an outright majority in the 290-member legislature in the first round of voting in March. Of 65 seats for grabs in Friday's runoff election, Ahmadinejad's opponents won 41 while the president's supporters got only 13 seats. Independents won 11, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency Saturday.

The president's supporters had their best showing in the capital Tehran. Ahmadinejad's conservatives critics won 16 seats while his supporters nine.

Iran's major reformist parties, who oppose both Ahmadinejad and the conservatives, mostly did not field candidates.