Iranian election results: guarded hopes

Preliminary results published Sunday, and with most of the votes counted, indicate that Iranian reformists will win all 30 parliamentary seats in Teheran, with both former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and current President Hassan Rohani declaring victory. The reformists also grabbed the top ten seats in the Council of Experts.

It is not easy to count close to 70 million ballots in two separate votes. 33 million voters -- 60 percent of those eligible -- voted for the Assembly of Experts, whose 88 members are expected to decide who will be the next supreme ruler of Iran after Ali Khamenei. It is also not easy to decipher the handwritten names of the 290 MPs, designed to be a rubber stamp for the Revolutionary Guards and the security and intelligence establishments.

Following the screening of the candidates list, and the removal of the prominent "reformists" led by the grandson of Islamic Revolution architect Ayatollah Khomeini, who joined the other camp, the remaining contestants are complete unknowns. "It's just like buying a green watermelon in the market," quipped reformist analyst Said Lilzad from Tehran. "Until you cut it open at home, you do not know if you made a good purchase or were fooled."

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