There is widespread coverage of preliminary results from Iran’s elections for parliament and a prominent clerical council, which took place on Friday. The Guardian, Times, Financial Times, Independent, Independent i, Metro and the online edition of the Telegraph all report that the results indicate a significant endorsement of President Rouhani and his relatively moderate outlook in comparison to the hardline conservative faction spearheaded by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The reformists’ “List of Hope” appears to have won all parliamentary seats in Tehran, while a coalition of relative moderates and independents appears to have done well in the provinces. Meanwhile, the Rouhani-aligned former-President Rafsanjani leads the Assembly of Experts race alongside Rouhani himself.

However, a Times editorial cautions that although Rouhani has been rewarded by the public for July’s nuclear deal with the international community, “Iran’s reformists are not liberals” and that the country is “hardly pivoting towards the West.” The article says that Iran “remains a state sponsor terrorism that denies Israel’s right to exist.”

The Times also includes a feature on Iranian soldiers, mainly from the Revolutionary Guards, who have been deployed in Syria and in some cases killed fighting alongside President Assad’s forces. On the ground in Syria itself, the Independent, Independent i and the online editions of the Guardian, Telegraph and Times all report that the fragile ceasefire which began on Saturday is holding, despite reports by both sides of breaches. The Independent describes “pockets of calm,” although Russian planes are said to have struck in Aleppo province and Hezbollah is reported to have launched attacks near the Lebanese border. The Financial Times online says that refugees have used the relative quiet to return to their homes to salvage belongings.

The Telegraph reports that Israel’s national airline El Al is being sued for gender discrimination by an 81-year-old woman, who was asked to change seats on a flight from New York to Tel Aviv after an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man asked not to be sat next to a woman.

In the Israeli press, both Yedioth and Ma’ariv report on the uproar in the Egyptian parliament after it became known that MP Tawfik Okasha had hosted the Israeli ambassador last October. MP Okasha was struck by a shoe that was hurled in his direction in parliament by a fellow MP, and received several death threats for “normalizing” relations with the “enemy ambassador,” as Okasha referred to Ambassador Haim Koren. Writing in Maariv, Israeli commentator Alon Ben-David refers to Israel’s increasingly close relationship with Egypt and other Arab Sunni states which includes intelligence and defence cooperation as well as frequent visits by both sides as a “‎mistress-like” ‎relationship in which these states are unwilling to publicise their relationship with Israel as long as no progress is made to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

NRG online reports on the infiltration of three Palestinians into Israel over the weekend which is still being investigated by the IDF Southern Command. A preliminary investigation found that the three had not planned to commit a terror attack but had fled the Gaza Strip because of the dire economic conditions there, and in the hope of finding shelter and relative comfort in an Israeli prison. Meanwhile, Yossi Yehoshua in Yedioth Ahronoth reports that against the backdrop of the Syrian cease-fire, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday for a series of important security meetings.