TEHRAN — The mayor of Tehran won Iran's presidency in a landslide Friday, using support from the clerical hierarchy and the country's vast military to restore total control of the government to Islamic fundamentalists and end an eight-year experiment in reform.
Partial returns released by the official news agency early today gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a political newcomer, more than 61% of the vote in his runoff contest with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Officials said the turnout was about 48% of the 47 million eligible voters, well short of the 63% reported in the first round of balloting a week ago.
Voters divided by class and ideology went to the polls in a battle for Iran's future, with many of the poor favoring the fundamentalist mayor, who vowed to end corruption and bring back revolutionary fervor. More affluent and liberal Iranians had regarded Rafsanjani, a centrist, as the last hope for reform.
With 18.4 million votes counted, Ahmadinejad had garnered 61.5%, an official with the Guardian Council said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. The Guardian Council, a conservative body of clerics and lawyers, supervises elections.
After being roundly rebuffed by voters in the last two presidential elections, conservatives regained control by painting the reformist camp, represented by outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, as corrupt, ineffectual and out of touch with ordinary people.
They were also helped by a trend among many opponents of the Islamic Republic's religious elite to reject reform as impossible in a country where the constitution gives the unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, control of the main levers of power, including the judiciary and armed forces.
The hard-line victory would appear to rule out any early improvement in relations between Iran and the West and could increase the chance of confrontation with the United States over Iran's nuclear development program, which Ahmadinejad has praised.
Unlike Rafsanjani, the mayor had said that better ties with the United States would not be a priority. He also has voiced disdain for Western-style democracy.
"We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy," he said last week.
Supporters of Ahmadinejad will go to mosques and "thank God for this great victory," campaign manager Ali Akbar Javanfekr told Associated Press.
