2 March 2012

Iran’s legislative elections


Iran's legislative elections

The ninth Parliamentary elections of Iran will be held on March 2nd. About 3,400 candidates cleared by the Guardian Council (a body of jurists and clerics) will compete for 290 seats in the parliament. While there are more than 60 different factions participating in these elections, three groups stand out as the most powerful – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s allies, backers of the ultra-conservative Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi (currently a member of the Assembly of Experts), and the United Principalist Front, which is made up of various conservative and traditional forces. As reformists have refrained from participating in these elections, competition is primarily amongst the conservative candidates.

Currently, India-Iran bilateral relations have been focused on issues concerning import of oil from Iran (the second-largest supplier of oil to India). While the Government of India did not acquiesce to US-EU sanctions on Iran’s oil imports, tighter sanctions against Iran have created payment issues between the two countries. As India has agreed to make part of the payments to Iran in rupees, the taxation complications involved in this mechanism has led to an increase in cost for India and the decrease in revenue for Iran.

This is the first election since the disputed presidential contest of 2009. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, who lost the elections to Ahmadinejad and then took to the streets alleging that the elections were rigged, have been under house arrest for more than a year.