Likely outcome reflects frustration at collapsing living standards and relations with the west

Iran’s conservatives are on the brink of a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary elections as forecasts show them taking more than two-thirds of the seats.

The reformists, the largest grouping in the outgoing parliament, have been decisively beaten, with predictions showing them taking only 17 seats in the 290-strong parliament. The principalists – or conservatives – were on course to take around 200 seats, including all 30 seats in the capital, Tehran, previously a stronghold of the reformers.

Hundreds of thousands of students, clerics, soldiers and black-clad women holding small children thronged streets across Iran to mark the toppling of the shah – many carrying portraits of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, and Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei