2017 Tehran City Council election explained

An election to the Islamic City Council of Tehran took place on 19 May 2017, along with the local elections nationwide.

The council is elected by the plurality-at-large voting system. This election saw losses for the Principlists and the Reformists gained all 21 seats.

More than 3.6 million voters turned out in the election, setting a record.

Campaign

In January 2017, reformists started working with moderates and supporters of Hassan Rouhani to compile a shared electoral list of candidates for City Council of Tehran. In April 2017, the Moderation and Development Party joined the Reformists' Supreme Council for Policymaking, the body responsible for picking the candidates included in the list. The final list under the brand name The List of Hope, drew criticism from reformists but was eventually endorsed by Mohammad Khatami. It included only 2 out of the 13 incumbent reformist councilors and several well-known reformist figures were not included. Some reform-minded non-partisans were also expected to feature in the list, including whistleblower Yashar Soltani, social activists Leila Arshad and Ameneh Shirafkan, and Taraneh Yalda, a cityplanner. As a result, two other lists emerged: Omīd-e Eṣlāḥāṭ (Persian: امید اصلاحات|lit=Reforms' Hope), partially made up of the incumbent reformist councilors and Šaḥr-e Dīgar (Persian: شهر دیگر|lit=Alternative City) by independent activists.

The conservative camp and its newly established umbrella organization Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces that supported the incumbent mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, unanimously endorsed the list published under the name Ḵedmaṭ (Persian: خدمت|lit=Service).

Several candidates who were initially approved, including former Islamic Iran Participation Front MP Ali Tajernia, Office for Strengthening Unity activist Abdollah Momeni and Emad Behavar of the Freedom Movement of Iran among others, were declared disqualified after Revolutionary Guards Intelligence agency reportedly forced the Central Election Supervisory Board.

Results

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	Candidate	Electoral list		Votes
align=center colspan="5"	↓ 21 Sitting Members ↓
1			Hope	1,756,086
2			Hope	1,411,068
3	Ahmad Masjed-Jamei (i)		Hope	1,405,994
4			Hope	1,296,657
5			Hope	1,288,611
6			Hope	1,285,237
7			Hope	1,265,868
8			Hope	1,232,947
9			Hope	1,230,722
10			Hope	1,228,477
11			Hope	1,216,209
12			Hope	1,206,159
13	Mohammad Salari (i)		Hope	1,188,874
14			Hope	1,186,602
15			Hope	1,172,782
16			Hope	1,171,609
17			Hope	1,133,048
18			Hope	1,121,237
19			Hope	1,112,126
20			Hope	1,070,025
21			Hope	1,066,813
align=center colspan="5"	↓ 11 Alternate Members ↓
22	Mehdi Chamran (i)		Service	656,136
23	Alireza Dabir (i)		Service	528,603
24	Habib Kashani (i)		Service	473,488
25	Morteza Talaie (i)		Service	468,428
26	Jalal Maleki		Service	455,286
27	Elaheh Rastgou (i)		Service	444,635
28	Mohsen Pirhadi (i)		Service	442,233
29	Parviz Sorouri (i)		Service	407,269
30	Eghbal Shakeri (i)		Service	381,183
31	Zohreh Lajevardi		Service	368,748
32	Reza Taghipour (i)		Service	368,683
align=center colspan="5"	↓ Defeated ↓
33	Mojtaba Shakeri (i)		Service	365,767
34	Gholamreza Ghasemian		Service	364,081
35	Hadi Zakeri		Service	363,041
36	Hamzeh Shakib		Service	352,103
37	Abdolmoghim Nassehi (i)		Service	349,833
38	Ali Riaz		Service	346,382
39	Mehdi Eghrarian		Service	339,740
40	Soudeh Najafi		Service	339,248
41	Abolfazl Ghana'ati (i)		Service	337,872
42	Babak Negaahdari		Service	317,966
43	Yashar Soltani		Alternative City	256,424
44	Hossein Raghfar		Alternative City	131,207
45	Mohammad-Mehdi Tondgouyan (i)		Reforms' Hope	128,604
46	Mohsen Sorkhou (i)		Reforms' Hope	109,167
47	Esmaeil Dousti (i)		Reforms' Hope	92,711
48	Ahmad Hakimipour (i)		Reforms' Hope	91,024
49	Mohammad-Ali Zam		Reforms' Hope	79,154
50	Hadi Saei (i)	66,446
51	Alireza Alikhani	57,267
52	Abbas Jadidi (i)	56,395
53	Fatemeh Daneshvar (i)		Reforms' Hope	51,400
54	Ahmad Donyamali (i)		Service & Change	45,737
55	Hossein Allahkaram	37,279
56	Meysam Mozaffar		Service & Change	36,981
57	Ameneh Shirafkan		Alternative City	33,739
58	Khosro Salehi		Alternative City	32,975
59	Hossein Rezazadeh (i)	32,743
60	Touraj Farhadi		Service & Change	28,775
61	Taraneh Yalda	24,528
62	Rasoul Jama'ati	24,047
63	Mohammad Aalikhani	18,151
64	Mohammad Shahi-Arablou	16,366
65	Ali Alikhani	14,385
66	Alireza Faghani	13,158
67	Seyyed Manaaf Hashemi	13,085
68	Afsaneh Eghbalnia		Reforms' Hope	12,785
69	Jafar Salari	12,512
70	Mohammad-Javad Mirghavami	12,275
71	Andranik Simoni		Alternative City	11,702
72	Ali Nozarpour		Reforms' Hope	10,156
73	Jalil Nikzad-Samarin	9,432
74	Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaei		Reforms' Hope	9,372
75	Masoud Hashemi	9,037
Invalid/blank votes				Undeclared
Total Votes				≈3,600,000
Source: Ministry of Interior (Total Votes)