Interesting times

Second-guessing Irans politicians is a dangerous sport,so it is anybodys guess how this presidential election will change that fascinating country. Plus,putting too much store by the character of its presidential incumbent is fraught with confusion,given the matrix of power centres that continues to elude all efforts to comprehend them as a neat hierarchy. It is therefore difficult to say right off how much this months election will change Iran.

There is little denying that the personality of the president does influence the tenor of Tehrans engagement with the rest of the world. You just have to compare the last two men who held the job. Mohammad Khatami president from 1997 to 2005 and an almost-ran this year brought his country closest to a grand bargain when he used the UN platform to call for a dialogue among civilisations. But in the end,Khatamis tenure remained a era of lost chances,and the US must still wonder at the chances it lost while Iranians take stock of the slivers of reform that so quickly vanished with the end of his presidency. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,who has made a spirited bid for re-election,was the surprise winner in 2005,defeating the bazaar-backed Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. His first term was a spectacle of provocation,as he made a pastime of needling the West with rough statements of Holocaust denial and jingoistic assertions of Irans nuclear programme. Yet,even on his watch,the same power structures that held Khatamis reformist intent in check moderated the edginess of Ahmadinejads provocation.

Yet,by the evidence of aspirations expressed by Irans voters in a remarkably argumentative campaign,the personality and the agenda of its new president could be a factor in how the countries power structures are oriented towards social and economic reform,as too towards diplomatic overtures. Three decades after Irans revolution,this may be a game-changing election.