Election blow for Iranian president Ahmadinejad

Final results today showed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents have won elections for local councils.

In an embarrassing blow for the leader, moderate conservatives opposed to Ahmadinejad won a majority of the seats followed by reformists, according to final results from last Friday's local elections announced by the Interior Ministry.

The vote is widely seen as a sign of public discontent with Ahmadinejad's hardline stances, which have fuelled fights with the West and led Iran closer to UN sanctions.

Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric and staunch stand on Iran's disputed nuclear programme are believed to have divided the conservatives who voted him into power last year.

Some conservatives feel Ahmadinejad has spent too much time confronting the United States and its allies and failed to deal with Iran's struggling economy.

The voting also represented a partial comeback for reformists, who favour closer ties with the West and further loosening of social and political restrictions under the Islamic government.

In Tehran, the capital, candidates supporting Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative, won seven of the 15 council seats.

Reformists won four, while Ahmadinejad's allies won three.

The last seat went to a wrestling champion who is considered an independent.

The election does not directly effect Ahmadinejad's administration and is not expected to bring immediate policy changes.

The local councils handle community matters in cities and town across the country.

But it represented the first time the public has weighed in on Ahmadinejad's stormy presidency since he took office in June 2005.

The results are expected to pressure him to change his populist anti-Western tone and focus more on Iran's high unemployment and economic problems at home.

Leading reformist Saeed Shariati said the results of the election was a "big no" to Ahmadinejad and his allies.

"People's vote means they don't support Ahmadinejad's policies and want change," Shariati, a leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's largest reformist party said today.

Shariati accused Ahmadinejad of harming Iran's interests with his hard line.

"We consider this government's policy to be against Iran's national interests and security," he said. "It is simply acting against Iran's interests."

His party seeks democratic changes within Iran's ruling Islamic establishment and supports relations with the United States.

Similar anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment was visible in the final results of a parallel election held to select members of the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran's supreme leader and chooses his successor.

A big boost for moderates within the ruling Islamic establishment was visible in the big number of votes for former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election runoff.

Rafsanjani, who supports dialogue with the United States, received the most votes of any Tehran candidate to win re-election to the assembly. Also re-elected was Hasan Rowhani, Iran's former top nuclear negotiator whom Ahmadinejad repeatedly accused of making too many concessions to the Europeans.

Iran started having council elections after a reform introduced in 1999 by then President Mohammed Khatami.

More than 233,000 candidates ran for more than 113,000 council seats in cities, towns and villages across the vast nation.

All municipal council candidates, including some 5,000 women, were vetted by parliamentary committees dominated by hardliners. The committees disqualified about 10,000 nominees, reports said.