A Jewish woman casts her ballot at a polling station during Iran's parliamentary elections in Tehran, Iran, March 2, 2012. The Iranian parliamentary elections began on Friday morning with some 48 million eligible voters to choose members of the 290-seat parliament. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

During Friday's elections, the main competition was between supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and conservative principalists who enjoy the support of influential clerics in the Islamic republic.

In the past years, Ahmadinejad and his aids have been faced with mounting pressures, most of which were exerted by the hardline conservatives-dominated parliament.

Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency reported Wednesday that Ahmadinejad was asked to appear before the parliament during the following week to answer questions by lawmakers about a number of the administration's irregularities.

Some local observers believe that the move of summoning the president to the parliament just ahead of the elections was an indication of power struggle among the conservative camp in the Islamic republic and was also aimed at practicing pressures on the president and his supporters.

Iranian interior minister on Wednesday rejected claims that the Iranian president was discouraging participating in the elections, saying that "this is not true... and the president is encouraging people to participate in the elections."

Although the Iranian officials said that some individual reformist candidates also registered for the elections, major reformist leaders, for the first time since the Islamic revolution in 1979, said that they would not announce any candidate lists for the elections.