Polls open in Iran’s parliamentary elections
Iranians walk at the shrine of the Shiite Saint Imam Abdulazim in Shahr-e-Ray a day prior to the parliamentary and Experts Assembly elections in south of Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016. AP
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s state TV says polls have opened in Iran’s parliamentary elections, the first since Iran’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers last year.
At the same time as parliamentary elections, Iranians are also voting Friday for the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body empowered to choose or dismiss the country’s supreme leader.
Some 53,000 polling stations throughout Iran take ballots for Iran’s 290-member parliament and the 88-member Experts Assembly. Nearly 55 million Iranians are eligible to vote. The vote is largely a referendum on moderate President Hassan Rouhani following last summer’s historic nuclear agreement, which curbed Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Reformists seeking greater democratic changes and moderates supporting Rouhani are pitted against hard-liners who oppose the nuclear deal and openings with the West.
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