BICOM

loyalists of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have won over 75 per cent of seats in parliamentary elections at the expense of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a near-complete count showed.

The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters — including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad — is expected to significantly hamper the president’s power after challenging the authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy.

The outcome of Friday’s vote, essentially a contest between conservative hardline factions with reformist leaders under house arrest, will have no impact on Iranian foreign policy, notably its nuclear standoff with the West. It will, however, boost Khamenei’s influence in next year’s presidential election.

With 90 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Khamenei supporters were expected to occupy more than three-quarters of the 290 seats in the Majlis (parliament), according to a list published by the interior ministry on Sunday. At the end of this week, Ahmadinejad is scheduled to be summoned to an unprecedented hearing in the outgoing parliament to answer questions focusing on his rocky handling of the economy.

In other Iran related news, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday that Iran held at least one nuclear weapons test in North Korea in 2010. The paper’s report is based on “Western intelligence agencies sources,” and says that the test, in fact, refutes US intelligence assessments suggesting there is no “hard evidence” that Iran is building nuclear weapons.