TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's reformers won 52 of the 66 seats contested in run-off legislative elections, the nation's largest pro-democracy party said Saturday — another setback for Islamic hard-liners fighting change.
The runoff was held three months after allies of Iran's reformist president won 70 percent of the seats decided in the first round of voting for the Majlis, or parliament.
If the runoff results stand, the reformers will have enough seats to easily control the 290-member parliament for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The reformers would also be in a position to grant greater social freedoms and weaken hard-liners' grip on key institutions.
But the hard-liners have shown they won't give up willingly: Since their first-round defeat on Feb. 18, they have unleashed a crackdown, shutting down 16 reform newspapers and arresting top liberal activists.
The hard-line Guardians Council, which oversees elections, annulled a dozen reformist victories from the first round. The Council also is yet to endorse the results in Tehran, where reformers won 29 of the 30 seats.
Saturday's results are certain to put more pressure on the hard-liners. Mohammad-Reza Khatami, head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the president's brother, called the results "a clear message" to those who have been resorting "to illegal means and seemingly legal pretexts to defeat this promising movement."
State-run Tehran radio announced the names of the winners without giving their affiliations. Elections in Iran are not contested on party lines, and the leanings of the candidates are known only unofficially.
Besides the 52 seats won by reformers, hard-liners took 10 seats and four seats went to independents, said Mhos Pirzadeh, an official at the headquarters of the Islamic Iran Participation Front. He said 43 winners were from his party.
Other reformist parties reported similar figures with small discrepancies. The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency also confirmed that 10 hard-liners had won, but it reported 40 reformist wins and said it did not know the affiliations of 16 others.
Run-offs were held for races where no candidate received the minimum 25 percent of votes in the first round. Only the two front-runners from the last round were eligible to contest each seat.
President Mohammad Khatami's 1997 election ignited a huge movement for change, fueled largely by Iran's predominantly young population. Islamic hard-liners, out of step with the nation's mood, are unpopular but have shown that they won't fold, using their grip on the military, the state media and the judiciary to stall democratic and social reforms.
Iranians are now watching to see whether the electoral victory will boost the reformers' power or open the way to more confrontation.
"The more the hard-liners try to dictate to the people, the more defeats they will suffer," said Karim Arqandehpour, editor of the reformist Mosharekat daily, among the newspapers that were shut down. "The hard-liners have no option but to respect the vote of the people, but unfortunately experience has shown that they are unwilling to reconsider their own policies."
Reformers fear that the hard-line crackdown could be an attempt to provoke riots that would bring troops into the streets and create a state of national emergency.
Such a situation would give hard-liners more time to maneuver. It could even give them an excuse to delay the May 27 opening of the Majlis, which constitutionally must be inaugurated on time except in a national emergency.