Iran's new hard-liner maps path

"The supreme leader must cope with it, too," says the analyst, who asked not to be named. "For two or three years, there have been orchestrated closer ties to Europe, and signals to the US, which must have had the leader's blessing. And then someone is elected who is against all that."

Of the myriad conservative and reform-leaning factions in Iran, only the hard-line Ansar-e-Hizbollah - which has deployed chainwielding militants to break up student demonstrations and some reform rallies in the past - backed the mayor's bid.

All other groups, such as the rightist Coordination Council of the Revolutionary Forces and Association of Combatant Clergy, and the reformist Participation Front, supported candidates with better chances. Still, political opponents, led by Rafsanjani, reacted bitterly to their defeat, charging that Ahmadinejad's sweep had been illegally orchestrated, by getting the basiji religious militia and Revolutionary Guard forces to sway the vote.

"Ahmadinejad's victory represents a fooling of the public, by creating a war between different classes of rich and poor," says Mohammed Atrianfar, chief editor of the reformist Shargh newspaper, and aide to Rafsanjani.

Five months ago, he says, the basiji and Revolutionary Guards created a "Basirat Plan" to undermine Rafsanjani's credibility with leaflets that portray the former two-time president and his family as very rich and out of touch with ordinary Iranians.

Then two months ago, he asserts, basiji were instructed to list 10 people they know - and to convince them to vote for Ahmadinejad.

"So the basiji acted just like a political party, which is illegal," says Mr. Atrianfar. "A person with few prospects can't come from the city as a technocrat, and get 60 percent of the national vote, without going through an organization. And there is no organization besides the basiji, that could do it."

Such stories are widespread, and may have helped squeeze Ahmadinejad into the runoff vote, after coming in less than one percentage point ahead of his reformist rival, cleric Mehdi Karrubi.

But one Iranian Army general told a family member of a similar arrangement in the armed forces that he witnessed and worried him - but was geared toward electing another conservative candidate, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.

"These are warnings, and the independence of executive power has been compromised," says Atrianfar.

"This election should send a message to the leadership, that economic needs are the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priority for people," says the veteran analyst. Most voters focused on the economic promises - which will be difficult enough to fulfill with Iran's convoluted and entrenched political, economic, and religious system - rather than possible consequences of tighter social rules.

While Ahmadinejad has a reputation as an uncompromising Islamist who reportedly ordered city-council staff to grow beards, one woman in his office said he is very tolerant of loose hair coverings and makeup - once punishable crimes in the first decade of the revolution - and has even recalled women staffers purged in the 1980s for such violations.

Still, before the vote, reformist Mehdi Karrubi touched on the fear. "Go and vote," he warned. "Otherwise they are going to make an Iranian Taliban here. The fanatics are coming, and people are not going to enjoy peace a security any longer."

But those who voted en masse for Ahmadinejad hold a different view. "Islam is against terror and against violence," says Jamshid Keshovarz, explaining that religious piety prompted his vote for Ahmadinejad. "Islam is a religion of freedom."

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