Even before the vote on Friday, Iran’s presidential election has to be seen as deeply flawed. The Guardian Council that vets candidates disqualified more than 600 potential contenders, including Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president. Only six names are on the ballot, all men who are acceptable to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s real power. Reformers who led protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent 2009 re-election remain under house arrest, and there has been a new crackdown on newspapers, political activists and foreign journalists.
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