Run-off may decide Iranian election

TEHRAN, Iran — The campaign manager for front-runner Hashemi Rafsanjani said Tuesday he expects his candidate to win Iran's presidential election, although it may take an unprecedented run-off ballot.

Opinion polls show Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989-97, with a narrow lead heading into Friday's vote. But candidates and analysts are increasingly speculating the contest will go to a run-off one week later.

"Our estimation is that Rafsanjani will win 52 percent of the votes Friday. In the worst of cases, he will win in the run-off," said Vice President Hossein Marashi, Rafsanjani's campaign manager and brother-in-law.

With the reformist movement severely weakened, Rafsanjani is seen as the most credible force to stop hard-liners from seizing the presidency.

Rafsanjani is presenting himself to the world as the only candidate who will not develop a nuclear bomb and to Iranians as the man who will end more than a quarter-century of estrangement between Tehran and Washington.

"I am going for a policy of relaxation of tension and detente, and this is a policy I will apply to the United States," Rafsanjani told CNN in an interview Tuesday. "I think the time is right to open a new chapter with the United States."

Top reformist candidate Mostafa Moin and hard-liner Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf are second and third in opinion polls.

If no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote, there will be a run-off between the two leading vote-getters. It will be a first for Iran where a candidate has never failed to reach 50 percent on the first ballot.

Anticipating a close race, outgoing President Mohammad Khatami said the government was ready for every possibility.

"The Interior Ministry is fully prepared to organize run-off elections," he told reporters Tuesday.

Polls predict a turnout of 50 percent to 55 percent of Iran's 48 million eligible voters, a low figure that analysts say is likely to benefit the hard-liners.

The hard-line ruling clerics loyal to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are hoping the vote will consolidate their power. The Guardian Council, a watchdog for Iran's theocratic constitution, initially barred reformers from running. But Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, forced the council to reverse that decision.