The outcome of last Friday's run-off election for Iran's presidency has come as an unsettling surprise for most outsiders, especially the Western countries. Some of them had genuinely believed that the chief concern of the Iranian people was social liberalisation, and hence had predicted that either the moderate cleric and two-time former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani or a liberal reformist, Mostafa Moin, would win the election.
Rafsanjani had carefully projected his new image as a moderate who wanted to prevent "extremism" from perpetuating its hold on power and also to improve relations with the US. In the event, a relatively little known hard-liner, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, emerged as close winner alongside Rafsanjani, with neither having the mandatory 50 percent of the vote. Moin finished at a distant fifth position and another reformist, Mehdi Karoubi, at third.
In the run-off, Ahmadinejad took an impressive lead over his rival Rafsanjani winning above 61 percent votes. It is true that, as some Western critics of the Iranian regime have been pointing out, the country's electoral system is a lot less than perfect.
An unelected body, Guardians Council, comprising representatives of the religious establishment, has the authority to disqualify candidates. Nonetheless, the election process itself is generally regarded to be fair, the defeated candidates criticism notwithstanding.
Had the social-political openness issue been of primary importance to the Iranian people they could have elected a pro-reform president from among a long list of candidates. In fact, even though US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has dismissed Ahmadinejad's election as illegitimate, he inadvertently acknowledged the vitality of the system in offering his guess that "over time, the young people and the women will find him, as well as his masters, unacceptable."
For now the Iranian people have found Ahmadinejad to be acceptable as president because of his sincerity as reflected in his simple lifestyle, and the promises that he would fight corruption and redistribute the country's oil wealth. Indeed issues like these play a decisive role in the electoral politics of most countries.
Social freedoms, of course, are no less important. In fact, the outgoing President Mohammed Khatami's government won two terms on the basis of his pro-reform agenda. The president-elect seems to be aware of both internal and external pressures not to reverse that process.
He held out the assurance at his maiden press conference on Sunday that his government would be that of "peace and moderation" and "no extremism will be acceptable in a popular government." He also told a female questioner, surely to the relief of many anxious Iranian women, that deciding the dress code is not his job as president.
Some Western countries have reacted badly to the Iranian people's choice. Rumsfeld's outburst though completely unjustified, is in line with his government's blatant arrogance. So is the Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's statement that his country does not consider the election to be democratic and that "the international community must, more than before, formulate a unified and stern policy towards Iran."
Unfortunately, the EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, too, made a provocative statement, threatening to freeze talks with Iran if the EU did not get a commitment from the new president on human rights and the nuclear issue. Understandably, Ahmadinejad responded by accusing the EU of high-handedness. He also said at his first press conference that his country does not really need to "restore" relations with the US.
Which is not an entirely empty boast as far as the economy is concerned, given the fact that Iran, being the world's fourth largest oil exporter, does not depend on foreign assistance offered by American-controlled donor agencies.
However, he was more careful in commenting on his country's nuclear programme. While reiterating Iran's usual arguments about its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, he averred that it was in his country's interest to continue talks with the European Union.
As a matter of fact, so far as Iran's nuclear policy is concerned, the president has a limited influence over it; it is decided by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and some other important clerics around him.
This religious establishment is believed to be amenable to resolving the issue through talks with the three big EU countries: Britain, France and Germany. Despite a rough start, therefore, Iran under Ahmadinejad may yet establish a smooth relationship with the EU, though it may continue to irk Washington and its protégé, Israel.