Iran elections are largely about jockeying for 2013 Iranians cast ballots for a new parliament Friday amid a silent boycott by reformists and exhortations from the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to deliver "a blow to the mouth" to the United States and Iran's other enemies. It was the first national balloting since the disputed 2009 presidential election sparked large-scale street protests, exposing pent-up disenchantment with the clerical leadership that has guided the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Unlike the 2009 vote, which featured a reformist challenge to the presidency, Friday's elections amounted to something quite distinct: an internecine struggle among various hard-line factions jockeying for position in next year's scheduled presidential elections. Experts said the results, not expected before Saturday, are unlikely to have any effect on contentious international issues such as Iran's controversial nuclear program. Concern that Tehran may be seeking the capability to build an atomic bomb has sparked warnings of a U.S. or Israeli attack on the nation's nuclear facilities. In recent days, many Iranians interviewed said their primary focus was not politics but the battered economy, which has been buffeted by soaring prices, rising unemployment and the plunging value of the nation's currency amid mounting international sanctions. Most reformist candidates were blocked from running in Friday's elections, analysts said, guaranteeing there would be no repeat of 2009. This time around, opponents quietly called for a boycott, hoping to damp turnout. But Iranian authorities countered with a massive get-out-the-vote campaign, equating going to the polls with fealty to the revolution. State television showed long lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots. Election officials said the "massive" demand forced an extension of voting hours until at least 11 p.m., five hours after the scheduled closing time. It was not clear whether the extension was a genuine bow to a late crush of civic-minded Iranians or a desperate attempt to coax voters to the polls. The semiofficial Fars News Agency trumpeted word that several "reformist" leaders - including former President Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the icon of the revolution - had cast ballots. The news was clearly aimed at countering the much-reported boycott. More than 48 million Iranians were eligible to vote for 290 parliament seats. Banners declaring that "Voting is a divine duty" festooned Tehran's subways. One young bride and groom told Fars that casting votes together put them in a "holy place" to begin their married life. How many Iranians heeded the call to vote remained unclear. Despite the televised images of long lines, there was little activity early Friday at a polling station at a girls high school in Tehran, unlike other years when lines snaked out the door. Foreign journalists were bused to a polling station at a mosque where a woman in a black head scarf was pronouncing her allegiance to Khamenei, the supreme leader, and occasionally shouting, "Death to America!" Not on the ballot was President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose controversial reelection three years ago amid allegations of widespread fraud triggered the so-called Green Revolution, later crushed. But his divisive presence was very much apparent. The president's allies are locked in a power struggle with even more conservative factions that question Ahmadinejad's loyalty to Iran's clerical leadership. Each side hoped to triumph Friday and be well-positioned for the presidential election scheduled for 2013, when Ahmadinejad's second and final term ends.