A Hard-Liner for the People

By Nahid Siamdoust

As mayor of Tehran for the past two years, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 48, has won the hearts of his constituents by, among other populist acts, providing marriage loans to young couples and forgiving debts owed to the city government. He has that rare gift--the common touch--that eludes many ambitious politicians the world over. But he has another crucial appeal in Iranian politics: he is a hard-liner. As a 28-year-old woman in a chador declared after she voted for him for President last week, "He will defend the Islamic Republic, a state we are willing to give our blood for."

Out of a field of seven candidates, Ahmadinejad won about 19% of the popular vote, nowhere near the more than 50% needed to become President outright. But the favorite, the pragmatic Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70, won only 21%, hence this Friday's runoff vote between the two. The reformers on last week's ballot, supporters of the policies of outgoing President Mohammed Khatami, were badly trounced and now see in Ahmadinejad's smiling face a stealth campaign by Iran's conservative ruling ayatullahs to take the presidency, denying it even to Rafsanjani, who has his fair share of hard-line credentials but has been talking of accommodation with the West. Ahmadinejad's bona fides are clearer: he is a member of the basij, a paramilitary force of Islamic militants. A message on his website reads, "In the name of God, I am proud to have been a basij teacher and pray to God that I continue to be one."

The runoff campaign began online and in the media as soon as the official results were established, with reformists throwing in their lot for Rafsanjani and conservatives supporting Ahmadinejad. Even though George W. Bush has dismissed Iran's elections as undemocratic, the country's liberalizing and conservative forces know that victory depends on a strategy the U.S. President can appreciate: turning out their base in a country split down the middle by ideology. --By Nahid Siamdoust