Iran conservatives confident as polling starts

Conservatives and allies of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood to keep their hold on parliament today as Iranians voted in elections in which reformists were barred from running.

Polls opened with state radio pronouncing that, “Today, the Iranian nation once again will show its political maturity”.

Some 4,500 candidates nationwide are running for parliament’s 290 seats in Friday’s vote, in which an estimated 44 million Iranians of over 18 years of age are eligible to vote.

Ahead of the vote, the Guardian Council – an unelected body of clerics and jurists – disqualified around 1,700 candidates, mostly reformists.

Those barred from running were judged insufficiently loyal to Islam or the revolution.