The middle class felt relief yet the 'Nezam' won

The latest election results are a win-win situation for Iran. Moderates with the support of reformists have seemingly won a landslide victory, but this is not a defeat for the hardline side of the regime.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his ally and former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, won the most votes in the race for membership of the Assembly of Experts. Leading hardline names were excluded from parliament and the Assembly of Experts, including Ayatollah Mohammed Yazdi and Ayatollah Mohammed-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. Mesbah-Yazdi was one of the closest clerics to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

Results indicate Iran will continue to comply with the nuclear agreement, and the Iranian economy will, bit by bit, be open up to foreign investment. Probably we'll see reforms to tackle corruption. The results indicate the establishment is here to stay, but will include the emerging middle class this time. In other words, the regime is trying to make peace with North Tehran, where the wealthy, intellectual middle class resides.  

The Iranian Revolution was a people's revolution of the religious, socialist, feminist, villagers, Tehrani, et cetera. However, probably the socialist side of the revolution give way to shanty-towners and crowds from villages and smaller cities. Upper-middle-class Iranians used to - and still to some extent today - call this crowd "dahati," meaning peasants. They never deemed them eligible to rule, but this new ruling class proved to be here to stay. 

When you go to the presidential campus in Tehran, you see state officials wearing old, cheap suits and undyed loafers that have been worn for years. You cannot see anybody wearing an expensive watch in government offices. Being a "dahati" sells in Iran...