After three weeks of desultory votingstretched out because of impassable roads and the difficulty of finding literate officials to prepare the handwritten ballotsIran last week tallied up the results of the election of a new, 200-seat Majlis (Parliament). As the returns trickled in, Premier Manouchehr Eghbal and his conservative Nationalists seemed assured of at least 150 seats. But it proved a Pyrrhic victory.
Concerned by widespread corruption in the government bureaucracy, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi had wanted a free, two-party vote. With the Shah's encouragement, his close boyhood friend, Asa-dollah Alam, had taken to the stump at the head of...
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