Iran's new hard-liner maps path

Representing the patchwork of divisive factions that swept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to victory, bearded ideologues and black-shrouded women mixed with Westernized youths at Mr. Ahmadinejad's working-class home this weekend.

The hard-line president-elect, who lacks any international experience, swept to victory over front-runner and regime stalwart Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a second-round vote last Friday. [Editor's note: The original version had Rafsanjani's names in the wrong order.]

The ultraconservative leader has vowed to spread Iran's oil money to the poor, end corruption, return to the roots of the 1979 Islamic revolution - and push Iran's nuclear-energy plans, which the US believes are a mask for a weapons program.

Critics charge that Ahmadinejad will take Iran back into a Talibanesque dark age, reverse eight years of loosening social rules, and accelerate a collision with the US and the West over nuclear policy and terrorism.

"The EU should not talk to us from a proud distance and should come down from the ivory tower," Ahmadinejad said Sunday, when asked at his first full-scale press conference about a possible European freeze of nuclear talks over human rights issues. "The Iranian nation is a great, alert nation, and will protect its [nuclear] right seriously," he said.

Despite unease abroad, Ahmadinejad's supporters, who lavished him a 61.6 percent popular mandate, compared with Mr. Rafsanjani's lackluster 35.9 percent of the vote, say he is a working-class hero who alone can connect with ordinary people, and hack away at Iran's chronic economic problems.

Groups of motorcyclists - normally used by shadowy right-wing militias to intimidate - Sunday handed out flowers to Westernized youths in affluent north Tehran in an apparent bid to reassure them that a crackdown is not on the cards. Many such youth voted for Rafsanjani, fearing the results of hard-line control over every political lever in Iran.

The stakes are high, as Iran enters a new phase of nuclear talks with European negotiators in July. And analysts say that Ahmadinejad may have to temper his hard-line image. "We need to show the rational face in Iran ... because extremism can only hurt this country," says Amir Mohebian, political editor of the conservative Resalat newspaper.

He says this could be a job for Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, regarding hard-line militants close to Ahmadinejad such as the religious basiji militia and Ansar-e-Hizbollah militants.

"Years ago the supreme leader was the brakes for liberals," says Mr. Mohebian. "But maybe this time he leader should be the brakes for the Hizbollahi."

The result could be a combined "iron fist and rational mind," adds Mohebian, such that: "If you want to talk to us, we are ready. If you want to attack us, we have no fear."

In one of his first acts as president-elect, Ahmadinejad - who does not wear the turban of a cleric, a fact that helped his candidacy - Sunday paid his respects at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic.

No one predicted victory by the most hard-line candidate in the field, or the depth of economic discontent and class and social divisions that manifested themselves at the ballot box, in favor of the former Tehran mayor. Ahmadinejad was considered by many to be the last choice of Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of state, and has permitted a lengthy dialogue with Europe over nuclear issues, and the sending of some positive signals to the US.

The president-elect met Ayatollah Khamenei yesterday to hear "guidelines," but Ahmadinejad's statements so far take a much tougher line.

"It's a mini-coup d'etat," says a veteran Iranian political analyst. "Something bigger has happened ... it's a movement, not to say antiregime, but it's antiestablishment. Ahmadinejad happened to offer a window of opportunity for all the poor, and people who feel deprived."

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