The re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after presidential polls on June 12 was heavily disputed by two defeated candidates, who claimed there had been mass fraud.The dispute of the result brought tens of thousands of supporters of the reformist candidates out onto the streets to demand that the result be annulled and there have been sporadic protests every since.

In a profound departure from a quarter-century of politics grounded in appeals to religious duty, the presidential campaigns unfolding across Iran's capital betray not the slightest suggestion that this is a theocratic state. Hard-line conservatives are running as reformers. Reformers, after years of being thwarted by hard-liners, are running scared. And most ordinary Iranians are holding themselves aloof -- unmoved, they say, by a political transformation that many dismiss as largely cosmetic.