A new parliament met for the first time in the Iranian capital Tehran on Monday, days after a deadly helicopter crash that killed the country’s president and foreign minister.
State radio reported that lawmakers from the Islamic Consultative Assembly opened the first session of the legislature with a recitation from the Quran.
A new speaker of parliament will be elected in the coming days. Sitting Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf is running for re-election against religious hardliner Mojtaba Zonnour and former Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Elections in Iran are widely seen as neither free nor fair because the country’s Guardian Council, an oversight body of Muslim clerics and lawyers, must approve all candidates before they can run.
The hardliners won this year’s parliamentary elections, held in two rounds in March and May, with a historically low turnout of around 40%.
Many Iranian citizens have become disillusioned by political repression, an economic crisis and failed attempts to reform the country’s political system.
A wave of protests in September 2022 following the death of a young Kurdish woman, Masha Amini, was violently suppressed by authorities.
Political power in Iran is concentrated in the hands of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian were killed more than a week ago in a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan. State news agency IRNA said more than 3 million people attended Raisi’s funeral in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Thursday, after days of national mourning.
