As he received his guests, early tallies and various prognoses indicated that reformers and moderates who have pledged to back President Mohammad Khatami will have a significant, probably dominant, place in the new 290-seat Parliament . Results from the capital, Tehran, as well as the large cities of Qum and Meshed, have not been announced. But the reform strategists, who have observers in the Ministry of Information offices where the ballots are being counted, said preliminary figures showed that pro-Khatami forces would hold a firm majority. President Khatami, who has invigorated Iran's political life with his talk of creating a civil society and the rule of law, was swept into office in 1997 on the strength of a tremendous turnout by Iran's young people and women. The government has not provided a breakdown of the winners so far, leaving the task of analyzing political orientations to journalists and political parties.
Many candidates are unknown or ran as independents.
Even those who presented themselves as supporters of Mr. Khatami's liberal agenda are unlikely to be united on every issue and so may be hard to classify, analysts said. Mr. Khatami's election opened the way for some liberalization of Iranian life, but he has been unable to achieve fundamental changes in part because of conservative opposition in the Parliament. His supporters in the elections pinned their hopes on the young, who make up more than half the population, and on people fed up with the conservatives who have dominated the Parliament since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The trial mesmerized the public and became a metaphor for the struggle between the reactionary clergy and the impatient young reformers. By this afternoon, his north Tehran home had become a place of pilgrimage for government ministers, provincial officials, presidential aides and many of the pro-Khatami reform candidates who seemed assured of becoming Iran's new power brokers.