Quotes of the Day

The March 14 election for Iran's parliament left conservatives with over 70% of the 290 seats. That was a foregone conclusion; most reformist candidates were banned from taking part in the vote. Yet the election may yet prove a turning point in Iran's domestic politics and in Tehran's long cold war with Washington.

A key result was the respectable showing of pragmatic conservatives opposed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and their emerging alliance with reformists. Tehran's Mayor Mohammed Qalibaf, a likely challenger in next year's presidential election, says a centrist bloc is taking shape. "Our people are tired of extremism," he told TIME. Many are tired of Ahmadinejad, too; the economy is a shambles and his abrasive foreign policy has choked off foreign investment.

The parliamentary elections were something of a warm-up for the presidential election. Another potential presidential candidate, Ali Larijani, Iran's former negotiator on its nuclear program, won a landslide victory in the city of Qom. A pragmatic conservative, he resigned from the nuclear brief last year after clashing with Ahmadinejad. Larijani had reportedly agreed to a temporary freeze of Iran's uranium-enrichment program as a good-faith gesture in talks with the West. Ahmadinejad publicly rejected the move, and the U.N. Security Council imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran.

Nobody should assume that the defeat of Ahmadinejad would solve all issues between Iran and the West. But it might change the climate. "While the pragmatic conservatives drive a hard bargain on the nuclear issue, they drive a bargain nevertheless," says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council in Washington. With a new Administration coming to Washington, too, there is a chance of a more conciliatory mood between the two rivals. "Iran and the U.S. have many common interests in the region. Our position should not be one of opposition but friendly competition," says Qalibaf. Translated from words into policy, that sort of sentiment would mark a sea change in the world's most dangerous interstate contest.

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