On a late-April trip to Iran, I had a hard time getting people to talk about the country's looming presidential race. My questions about the election, to be held Friday, were dismissed as irrelevant in a nation of apathetic voters who knew that real power was vested not in the president but in Iran's unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a handful of clerics.
Most of the people I spoke to seemed resigned to the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And they felt that the election didn't really matter, given Khamenei's tightfisted control.
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