Radicals to stop Rafsanjani

Iranian presidential election is obviously not as heated and transparent as in the U.S., but it has its own moments.

After Mir Hossein Mousavi, former prime minister of Iran, declined to stand as a candidate for the reformist and left of the center of the Iranian politics, all eyes are now on Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president.

Many believe that if he accepts to be a candidate, given that the Guardian Council do not dare to disqualify him, no one from the radical right (Revolutionary Guards and Khamanei allies), could possibly beat him. So the radical right will be doing everything they can to stop him before he officially announce his candidacy. They have threaten him to reveal his sons' large accounts of corruption and even have suggested a bill to their own parliament (You do remember how they elected themselves into it, don't you.) lowering the constitutional age limit for a President from 75 to 70, to effectively disqualify him.

But I personally guess that he won't announce his nomination until the last moments to minimize the possible damage and at the same time to keep the radical right divided, because they won't know which of their likely candidates to send to the battle until the candidate from the left and the center (including reformists and pragmatist centrists) is finalized.

So everything in the coming months to the election, on June 2005, is tied to the decision of Rafsanji. He is the only hope of the moderates, even though he is not a popular person among many middle-class Iranians. But he is the only choice people would probably against the radical Islamists around the leader.