In May 2016, the Reformist Hope faction participated in its first intra-parliamentary vote, for speaker, a few months after its overwhelming victory in legislative elections. Mohammad Reza Aref, head of the List of Hope, a coalition of Reformists and moderates supporting President Hassan Rouhani, lost his bid for the speakership. Instead, Ali Larijani, the conservative who had long held the post, was re-elected with 173 votes to Aref’s 103.
Aref’s allies, however, won two deputy speakership positions, with Masoud Pezeskhian, representing Tabriz, becoming first vice speaker, and Ali Motahari, a moderate conservative, becoming second vice speaker. For political analysts, the vote set the record straight in terms of the political weight that each group rightly wielded in the legislature.
