Legislative Election Campaign Kicks Off in Iran

Candidates running for seats in the Iranian parliament began campaigning on February 22 in the country’s first election since the bloody crackdown on the 2022 popular uprising.

Voters are due to cast their ballots on March 1 to pick new members of the 290-seat legislature among 15,200 candidates who have been approved by the hardline Guardian Council.

That’s more than twice the number of candidates allowed to compete in 2020 for a four-year term in the chamber, when voter turnout was just over 42 percent, the lowest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Also on March 1, 144 clerics will compete for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a body in charge of appointing the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader and overseeing his work. Their term of service is eight years.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, 84, has urged Iranians to head to the polling stations.

"Everyone should participate in elections," he said on February 18. "It is important to choose the best person, but the priority is for people to participate."

In the absence of serious competition from reformists and moderates, many observers expect the new parliament will likely continue to be controlled by conservatives.

Some opposition figures in Iran and members of the diaspora have called for a boycott of the polls, with the Reform Front, a key coalition of reformist parties, announcing it will not take part in "meaningless, non-competitive and ineffective elections."

Former President Hassan Rouhani, who was barred from seeking reelection to the Assembly of Experts after 24 years of membership, has called on the people to vote "to protest against the ruling minority."