High time for Dubya to take hard line with the nuclear mullahs

IRAN votes - but don't hold your breath. So did Romania under Ceausescu, in the glorious days when the Conducator felt snubbed if he failed to get more than 112% of the vote. This is a contest based on the British model: pre-1832 Eatanswill, as chronicled by Dickens. Most of the seven presidential candidates - all vetted for theocratic credentials by the 12-man Guardian Council - stood as "reformists" because that is the current buzz. It is like a Blairite makeover: New Islamofascism.

This charade may have dazzled some starry-eyed western chatterati, but it has signally failed to impress its principal target, George W Bush. Last week Dubya opined of this new departure in Persianpolitik: "Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy." There are no flies on Mrs Bush's wee boy. Unfortunately, such healthy scepticism has not always informed US presidents.

When dinosaurs ruled the earth, in the shape of Jimmy Carter, the peanut-cultivating peacenik, it was America's - or rather the Democrats' - withdrawal of support from the Shah in 1978 that provoked his downfall the following year. Former Democrat attorney-general Ramsey Clark visited Ayatollah Khomeini in France and urged his government not to help the Shah. Andrew Young, the Peanut's ambassador to the UN, predicted that Khomeini would "eventually be hailed as a saint". It is when one recalls the many deluded fruitcakes who have influenced US foreign policy in the past that swivel-eyed Donald Rumsfeld assumes credible, reassuring dimensions.

Iran is a potent reminder that American liberalism has sown more tyranny and misery around the world than American chauvinism. The United States has a legitimate locus in Iranian affairs because it bears responsibility for the creation of the ayatollahs' rgime. Now, in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and the popular uprisings in former Soviet republics, the Iranian government is anxious to cultivate - or at least to placate - America. Hence the new "reformist" maquillage on the face of tyranny. Of Iran's 47 million voters, 70% are under the age of 30 and the voting age is 15.

Too many members of this youthful constituency have been clubbed, imprisoned or tortured by the thugs and security forces of the outgoing President Khatami, elected by landslides on a "reformist" ticket in 1997 and 2001, for them to repose much faith in such supposed new brooms. During the election campaign, Khatami told operatives within the interior and intelligence ministries, with regard to the young reformist activists: "I ask you to identify those offenders and introduce them to the judiciary more seriously and more quickly."

What a pantomime it has been. The frontrunner for the presidency in next Friday's run-off, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (Self-Styled Moderate, Kickback Taker), will face Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Mayor of Tehran, ex-Revolutionary Guard and Closer of Reformist Cultural Centres). Both have managed to see off Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (Hardline Police Chief and Blairite - his campaign was based on Millbank methods) and Mostafa Moin (Wee Pretendy Reformer).

All candidates were approved by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the real electorate of Iran and ultimate personification of one man, one vote. Compared to his authority, the elected president has as much power as the mayor of Berchtesgaden in the Third Reich.

So America, as Dubya has already signalled, will not be impressed by this charade. Nor should he concern himself at present with attempting to extend democracy to Iran: the youthful population will bring that about in due time. The immediate priority for the West is Iran's nuclear programme. Rafsanjani admitted last Wednesday that Iran had deceived the world about its nuclear activities, but pledged that, if he was elected, he would limit projects to civilian use. And the band played...

Rafsanjani's admission was forced by the leaking of a UN report which showed that Tehran's work on plutonium - vital for the creation of nuclear weapons - had continued into 1998, five years later than the rgime had previously revealed. New evidence submitted by the Pakistan government to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggests that Iran may have obtained weapons-grade uranium from maverick Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Whatever the eventual verdict, the phenomenon of Islamist nuclear proliferation must be of very grave concern to the United States and not only because of a direct threat: even the remote prospect of the Children of Abraham vapourising the mad mullahs' nuclear facilities, in the kind of pre-emptive strike they have favoured in the past, would create a black hole in the Middle East peace process that not even Bob Geldof could heal.

Oil is the other consideration. Iran holds 10% of the world's total proven oil reserves, 125.8 billion barrels - an increase from 90 billion barrels in 2003. Recent increases in oil prices have favoured the Iranian economy: oil export revenues account for 85% of total export earnings and around 45% of the government budget. This enabled Iran's real GDP to increase by 5.8% in 2004, with a projected growth of 5.4% this year and 4.5% in 2006. The problem is the country's existing oilfields have a natural rate of decline estimated at 8%-13% per year and need upgrading, reinforced by exploitation of new fields.

For these and other reasons, the rgime is desperately attempting to attract foreign investment, hence its new drive to achieve international respectability. At the parliamentary elections in February 2004 the openly declared hardliners won a victory; but the following month President Bush renewed sanctions originally imposed by Bill Clinton in 1995. Of these, the most damaging was the ban on any "contract for the financing of the development of petroleum resources located in Iran".

That is the priority of the rgime: it's the economy, stupid. Iran's young people, if only as an icon of revolt, favour America. Forget the dummy elections, Dubya, and play hardball some more with the mullahs.