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 The president does have a major advantage: support from Iran's supreme leader. A key question will be whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's backing lasts until presidential elections expected in the summer of 2009.
Conservatives maintained their hold on the parliament in Friday's election, but their camp is split over Ahmadinejad. His conservative opponents won a solid bloc that will likely clash with the president over the next year.
Reformists also managed to preserve their presence even though most of their candidates were barred from the race.
"If the government continues the policies that have been controversial, the majority of the parliament will be against it," said Amir Ali Amiri, spokesman of the Inclusive Coalition of Principlists, an election slate of conservatives who have broken with the hard-line president.
Amiri said the coalition might put forward a candidate for the presidency, but said "we must wait" until the political situation becomes clearer, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Two men are seen as top possibilities to challenge Ahmadinejad: Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, who won a parliament seat in the election.
The strength of Ahmadinejad's conservative opponents likely won't mean changes in Iran's tough line toward the United States.
They support pushing ahead with Iran's nuclear program despite U.N. sanctions. But they also oppose Ahmadinejad inflammatory rhetoric, which they say has provoked the West. Some seek greater pragmatism in dealing with the outside world.
The economy has been Ahmadinejad's weakest point. Jumps in inflation have at least doubled prices for some foods over the past year, and unemployment is believed by some economists to be around 15 percent. And the public has been angered by gas rationing and heating oil shortages during the unusually cold winter.
Ahmadinejad's critics say his economic policies have been haphazard and only made the situation worse.
Amiri said his camp would seek to elect Larijani as parliament speaker -- a post now held by an Ahmadinejad ally
-- and oppose the current deputy speaker, who is widely seen as the brain behind the president's rise to power.
Still, Khamenei has become more overt in his backing for Ahmadinejad, despite grumblings in the conservative camp. The supreme leader, as head of Iran's clerical leadership, has final word in all state matters.
Khamenei tries to stay above factional disputes in public, but took the unusual step before the election of expressing strong support for the president, calling on voters to choose candidates allied to the government.
One reason may be the nuclear issue. Khamenei has praised Ahmadinejad's handling of the matter, and the clerical powers may see him as best able to stand up to the West.
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 For Iran's clerical establishment, conservatives' squabbling appeared to be secondary to the greater priority
-- preventing reformists from exploiting anger at Ahmadinejad over the economy to make big gains in the legislature.
Ahead of the vote, the cleric-run Guardian Council disqualified some 1,700 candidates. Reformists could only run in about half the races nationwide.
Reformists also questioned the strong showing of hard-liners for the 30 seats in Tehran, where public support for the reform movement is believed strongest. In final results announced Monday on state radio, Ahmadinejad allies won 19 of its seats; the rest will be decided in a run-off in April or May.
Reformists demanded the Interior Ministry make public the count from each of the capital's polling sites.
"How it can be that reformists won 30 percent of the seats in the rural areas, but (none so far) in the capital, where reformists enjoy more media support," National Confidence, the paper of a reformist party of the same name, said in an editorial.
The ministry said the count was properly carried out. Turnout in the capital is believed to have been lower than the 60 percent nationwide announced by the government
-- which could have hurt reformists.
Nationwide, including Tehran, 132 of parliament's 290 seats went to conservatives. Around 90 went to the list dominated by pro-Ahmadinejad hard-liners and the rest to the Inclusive Coalition, according to results announced by state television and the official news agency IRNA.
Reformists won 31 seats, according to the results. Thirty-nine winners were independents whose political leanings are not known but likely include members of all camps.
More than 70 seats outside Tehran will be decided in the upcoming run-off.
Still, reformists were confident Ahmadinejad had been weakened.
"The next parliament will not be in the hands of Ahmadinejad, as current one is," said Ali Shariati, an adviser to former reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
[Associated
Press; By LEE KEATH]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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