“I am here to back Ayatollah Khamenei,” shopkeeper Houman Riyazi, 50, said at a polling station in Tehran.

Khamenei called for a high turnout in the election, seen as a test for the popularity of the clerical establishment, which was rocked by the bloody aftermath of a 2009 presidential vote that reformists said was rigged in Ahmadinejad’s favor.

With reformists mostly sidelined and opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi under house arrest, the election is mostly a race between rival conservative hard-liners — those loyal to Khamenei and those in Ahmadinejad’s camp. Police guarded main squares and streets in Tehran and other cities, but there were no immediate reports of violence.

In wealthier north Tehran, most polling centers were empty for hours after they opened before voting picked up. State television showed footage of long lines of voters in major provincial cities such as Isfahan and Shiraz.

Facing growing isolation and threats of Israeli military action over the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear program, the clerical establishment needed a high turnout to display its legitimacy, badly damaged after Ahmadinejad’s re-election. State radio and television have played revolutionary songs in the past days to stir nationalist sentiment

The authorities predicted a turnout of more than 65 percent, compared to 57 percent in the 2008 parliamentary vote.

Despite a low-key election campaign in Isfahan, queues of voters formed in the ancient city, where first-time voters checked candidate lists on the banks of the Zayandeh Roud river.

Khamenei endorsed Ahmadinejad’s re-election, but was soon annoyed when the president tried to expand his power.

In the past months, dozens of Ahmadinejad allies have been detained or dismissed from their posts for being linked to a “deviant current” that his rivals say aims to sideline clerics.

The election for the 290-seat Parliament pits the United Front of Principlists, which includes loyalists of Khamenei, against the equally hard-line, pro-Ahmadinejad Resistance Front.