Iranians Go To Polls In Vote To Replace Ahmadinejad
Millions of voters in Iran cast ballots Friday in elections to replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a race that is being characterized as a potential challenge to the country's ruling Islamic clerics.
A slate of conservatives tacitly backed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei face off against the lone moderate, Hasan Rowhan, a former nuclear negotiator.
Other candidates include Saeed Jalili, also a nuclear negotiator, Mayor of Tehran Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Khamenei's diplomatic adviser Ali Akbar Velayati.
Although the president in Iran has little say in the country's most substantive issues, long lines at polling stations in Tehran and elsewhere suggest enthusiasm for an election that was once viewed as a pre-engineered victory for Iran's ruling establishment, The Associated Press reports.
Khamenei, casting his ballot on Friday, took the opportunity to lash out at the United States after Secretary of State John Kerry last month questioned the credibility of the poll.
"Recently I have heard that a U.S. security official has said they do not accept this election," the cleric was quoted by state TV as saying. "OK, the hell with you."
The AP writes that:
"A victory by Rowhani would be seen as a small setback for Iran's Islamic establishment, but not the type of overwhelming challenge posed four years ago by the reformist Green Movement, which was brutally crushed after mass protests claiming Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election was the result of systematic fraud in the vote counting."