„Iranians cast their votes Friday in runoff elections for the quarter of parliamentary seats still in contention from February’s first round. The complete tally appears to have produced a plurality of seats for members of President Hassan Rouhani’s camp, and Western media have been quick to hail those results as a win for ‚moderates.‘ The elections, however, will change little in the Islamic Republic, where power continues to reside in unelected institutions, and where the relative ‚moderates‘ are hardly moderates at all.
The moderate-versus-hardliner dichotomy is ill-suited to the Islamic Republic. As Wendy Sherman, the lead negotiator of last summer’s nuclear deal, noted in March, Iranians face a choice not between moderates and hard-liners, but hard-liners and ‚hard-hard-liners.‘ She added that Rouhani, despite being feted in Western media as a ‚moderate,‘ is himself a hardliner.“ (Der wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter der Foundation for Defense of Democracies Saeed Ghasseminejad auf der Website seines Insitutes: „Iran’s Parliamentary Elections are No Victory for ‚Moderates‘“)