Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will now have to contend with many more critics in parliament after their entry into the legislature following the parliamentary elections which concluded last week.  The elections have created two major power centres: President Ahmadinejad and his hardline followers pitted against former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and Teheran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who form  the “soft” conservative faction in the polity. The elections which voted 290 law-makers into parliament proved controversial because of the disqualification of 1,700 candidates, most of whom were reformists. The Guardian Council comprising clerics and jurists, who are aligned to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, disqualified these candidates because they were not considered adequately loyal to the ideals of the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. The polls have therefore circumscribed the political process and strengthened the position of conservatives in the power structure.

Iran has over the years experimented with liberalism under Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, democracy under Mohammad Khatami and now social justice during Ahmadinejad’s regime. The Ahmadinejad regime faces criticism for mismanagement of the economy which had windfall gains of $ 63 billion in oil revenues from the global price boom. This has resulted in a high inflation rate which affects the common man.

In a sense, the elections are more about the triumph of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini’s strategy to consolidate the power of conservative factions and keep the reformers at bay. While Khameini believes that his country requires no real reform, he has to balance the various conservative factions in the polity to keep potential challengers in check. Another aspect is the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps which has gradually emerged as a power centre since Ahmadinejad assumed power in 2005. Mohammad Qalibaf is also a former Revolutionary Guards Commander. Perhaps Iran is likely to move towards a more authoritarian state as the military assumes a greater role in decision-making. This might also lead to the leadership taking a more inflexible position on nuclear policy. Whether or not the new political dispensation, especially the “soft” conservatives, will be able to pursue economic liberalisation and if it does, to what extent it will go, remains to be seen. And how exactly Iran would like to engage the West, which is demonising it,  is crucial for the region and beyond.