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Keesing's Record of World Events (formerly Keesing's Contemporary Archives), Volume 38, April, 1992 Iran, Page 38887 © 1931-2006 Keesing's Worldwide, LLC - All Rights Reserved. First round of elections

The ﬁrst round of voting to elect a new Majlis ash-shoura ("consultative council", or parliament) took place on April 10. The result represented a victory for the “moderate” current associated with President Hashemi Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, already apparently favoured by the pre-election screening which eliminated about a third of the prospective candidates–most of them reportedly belonging to the more radical faction.

In the ﬁrst round of voting 133 candidates received a sufﬁciently large proportion of the vote (at least 30 per cent) to win seats in the 270-member Majlis. Of these 133 new Majlis members, it was estimated that some 55 were supporters of Rafsanjani and that many of the remainder were reported to be independent candidates likely to align themselves with the President's faction.

Some constituencies were multiparty ones–the Tehran constituency being an extreme example, with voters being asked to name 30 candidates of their choice. Five constituencies were the preserve of the country's four recognized religious minorities–Zoroastrians, Jews, Assyrian Christians and Armenian Christians–which together had 21 candidates standing for election. Out of a total of 196 constituencies nationwide, 193 had been able to announce (on April 16) some or all of their winning candidates.

This was the fourth legislative election since the Iranian revolution in 1979, previous ones having been held in March 1980, May 1984 and April 1988. The authorities reported that almost 19,000,000 people, or 65 per cent of those eligible, had voted. A second round of voting, in constituencies which had not been able to complete their quota of candidates, was announced for May 8; in this round, the candidates with most votes would be declared elected, even if they received less than the 30 per cent required for election in the ﬁrst round.

Although there were technically no political parties in Iran, foreign commentators identiﬁed two major factions. The followers of Rafsanjani's policy of economic liberalization and a greater openness towards the exterior were referred to in Farsi as the Rouhanyat (sometimes described to as the Combatant Clergy Association). Those clerics and politicians remaining closer to the rhetoric of the immediate post-revolutionary years–emphasizing opposition to the USA, the struggle against “Zionism", the export of the Islamic revolution, centralized control of the economy and consumer subsidies to protect the poorer classes– were referred to as the Rouhanyoun (translated as the Combatant Ulema Association). This “radical” group had ceased to be the predominant voice in other political institutions–such as the Council of Guardians and the Assembly of Experts–but had continued to command a majority of some 60 per cent in the outgoing Majlis.

There had been four women members in the outgoing Majlis, and in the April 10 vote for the ﬁrst time a women was elected to represent a constituency outside Tehran (in the holy city of Mashad). At least 12 other women candidates went through to the second round of voting.

Pre-election screening of candidates

Prospective parliamentary candidates were screened by executive committees made up of local officials and eight selected “trustees”. These committees had been created on March 12, under the auspices of the Interior Ministry and as laid down in the electoral law. The Rouhanyoun faction protested as some 1,100 prospective candidates were eliminated by the committees on the grounds that they did not meet minimum educational and other standards. Official figures were that 2,876 had been approved as candidates by April 2, including 52 women.

Former Prime Minister and leader since 1961 of the Freedom Movement of Iran (FMI), Mehdi Bazargan, on March 30 and April 14 claimed in Tehran that the elections had not been free and that his group had not been allowed to participate. Eight FMI members who had been arrested in June 1990 were among 108 prisoners who on April 13 were reported to have been freed on April 1.

Bombing of Mojahedin base

As the week-long election campaign got under way, a base of the exiled opposition movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq ("People's Combatants"), at Ashraf, Iraq, was attacked by some 10 Iranian airforce bombers on the morning of April 5.

The Ashraf base was near the town of Al Khalis, some 70 km north-east of Baghdad and 90 km from the Iran-Iraq border. The military wing of Massoud Rajavi's Mojahadin-e Khalq, the National Liberation Army (NLA), had for some time operated out of the base with the permission of the Iraqi government. The NLA was reportedly virtually integrated as a unit of the Iraqi army and had 3,000 well-trained troops. Anti-aircraft artillery shot down one of the Iranian aircraft and captured two crewmen. The planes were reported to have used cluster bombs and also to have strafed roads and buildings. Rajavi on April 7 claimed that one person had been killed.

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The Iranian authorities said that the raid was in retaliation for a raid on two Iranian villages near the border town of Qasr-e-Shirin on April 4, in which four “Iranian tribesmen” had been killed.

The April 5 raid was the ﬁrst by Iran against Iraqi territory since the truce which had effectively ended the Iran-Iraq war in August 1988; the border between Iran and Iraq had remained closed since that time. Iraq made a formal complaint to the UN security Council and, on April 12, to the Iranian government, about the raids. Iran on April 6 denounced, in a letter to the security Council, Iraq's toleration of the operation of “terrorist mercenaries", and demanded that Iraq should stop supporting them from inside Iraqi territory. On April 14 a report on the attacks drawn up by the UN ofﬁces in Tehran and Baghdad was submitted to UN security Council.

On April 5, within hours of the bombing, Iranian supporters of the Mojahadin-e Khalq protested outside Iranian embassies in eight west European countries and in Ottawa, Canada, and on April 6 in Canberra, Australia. Damage to embassies was particularly severe in Bonn and Stockholm, and in New York ﬁve Iranians occupied Iran's mission to the UN for several hours.

Take-over of Abu Musa island

On or around April 15, Iranian forces moved from their base on Abu Musa island to take control of its school, police station and desalination plant.

Abu Musa island, at the head of the Gulf almost mid-way between the Iranian coast and the coast of Sharjah, was ruled by the Emir of Sharjah until 1971. Shortly after the creation of the United Arab Emirates in that year, the Iranian and UAE governments concluded an agreement allowing Iran to station troops there. Since 1971 it had been administered jointly by Iran and the UAE, with offshore oil revenues shared between Iran and the rulers of the Sharjah emirate.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Vellayati on April 22 denied that Iran planned to expel Arab residents from the island. Other reports suggested that Iranian and Arab expatriate workers from non-UAE countries had been compelled to leave. Abu Musa had a population of some 700 UAE citizens.

The UAE was reported to have reacted in a low-key manner to the Iranian takeover, coming as it did at a time when the Gulf states were hoping for improved relations with Iran. Two other islands covered by the 1971 agreement, Large Tunb and Small Tunb, were believed to be uninhabited.

Execution of Bahai

Representatives of the 300,000-strong Bahai community in Iran notiﬁed the UN Human Rights Commission on April 9 of the execution without trial of an Iranian Bahai, Bahman Samandari, a 52-year-old economist. He had reportedly been executed on March 20, the ﬁrst Bahai to be executed since December 1988.

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