SECOND FILLIPIC:

Reformist allies of Hassan Rouhani swept all 30 parliamentary seats in the Iranian capital, handing the moderate president a major boost on Sunday in elections seen as vital to his government.

The List of Hope, a pro-Rouhani coalition of moderates and reformists, was on course to wipe out its conservative rivals in Tehran with 90 percent of the votes counted from Friday's general election. [...]

The landslide in the capital in Iran's first election since a landmark nuclear deal last year ended a 13-year standoff with the West was a major fillip for Rouhani. [...]

There was further good news for the president in preliminary results from the second election that took place on Friday, for the Assembly of Experts, a powerful committee of clerics that monitors the work of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rouhani and his close ally Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term president, held the first two places among the 28 clerics seeking one of the 16 places reserved on the assembly for Tehran.

Fourteen of those on the Rouhani-Rafsanjani list for the assembly were in the top 16, with more than a third of votes counted.

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