Bush's demons reveal a tougher edge in Iran

THE triumph of Tehran's mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the Iranian presidential election run-off completes the conservative Islamists' takeover of all the branches of government in Iran. Given Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative Islamic credentials, he is expected to work in concert with Iran's unelected but constitutionally very powerful supreme spiritual and political leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his supporters, who dominate the legislature and judiciary, as well as the security and armed forces. He will follow a more restrictive Shiite Islamic path in his domestic and foreign policy dispositions than his two immediate predecessors, the outgoing reformist President Mohammed Khatami and the pragmatist Rafsanjani. He has promised to resist "Western decadence", build "a powerful modern Islamic Iran" and press on with Iran's nuclear program.