as this paper goes to press, Iran has just come through its longanticipated presidential election. despite predictions of a victory for a well-known clerical "moderate," former president and expediency council head akhbar hashemi-rafsanjani, the winner was the hard-line conservative mayor of tehran, Mahmoud ahmadinejad, a relative unknown. the terms hard-liner and conservative are used virtually interchangeably by many inside and outside Iran; they are relative terms, since there are no political parties in Iran, with their meaning dependent on context and issue. the election consolidated...