Iran thumbs its nose at the US

The triumph of Tehran's Mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the Iranian presidential election run-off over Hashemi Rafsanjani completes the conservative Islamists' takeover of all branches of government in Iran. Given Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative Islamic credentials, he can be expected to work with Iran's unelected but constitutionally 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. Ahmadinejad will follow a more restrictive Shiite Islamic path in his domestic and foreign policy dispositions than his two immediate predecessors, the outgoing reformist president Mohammad Khatami and the pragmatist Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He has promised to resist "Western decadence", build "a powerful modern Islamic Iran" and press on with Iran's nuclear program.