No offence though but most of you guys got it wrong due to lack of imagination. You need to look at the regime, the way revolutionaries are dreaming it. Here let me draw the picture that they have in mind:
During Bush era, they needed someone though and full of rhetorics like Bush, someone with capable enough to show the world that Islamic revolution would destroy everything possibly that they can, if they hassled by any country which they would. They don't care about how many people in world would die in the middle of their fight for power, and that was the message they wanted world to hear. Why is that?! Because they want their regime and revolution to survive so they do everything to keep it going.
Now with Obama's administration strategy towards Iran, Islamic regime doesn't need a mouthpiece anymore; they want someone a bit moderate with strong revolutionary ties to bring Iran closer to US. Keep in mind that person should have strong revolutionary ties and should have strong commitment to Khomeini (Islamic Iran's revolution leader)'s beliefs because other revolutionaries will look up to him if he asks them <<to put off the fight with US due to strategy change>>
Although Khamenie has the last word in Iran but he wouldn't risk going to this path all by himself or with Ahmadinejad with strong opposition inside and outside of regime against him, there has to be someone else to take the blame and that person should have aforementioned features.
Fariborz Shamshiri
http://www.rottengods.com
Anyone but Ahmadinejad
The unlikely candidacy of Mir Hossein Mousavi.
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The candidate looked as if he wished he could be anywhere but where he was—among his most enthusiastic supporters. About 4,000 mostly young people had gathered in Tehran's Milad Hall for several hours, waiting to see and cheer their man: Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reformist running in the upcoming Iranian presidential election.
The crowd, overflowing with hope for freedom and a more open society, chanted, "Political prisoners should be released!" Then, "Death to the dictator!" And then, not quite as an afterthought, "Mousavi, we support you!" On a giant, pitiless video monitor above him, his face loomed large and wan. Mousavi hates to be photographed; he's said to be embarrassed by the size of his nose. But his cavernous nostrils looked insignificant compared with the chasm between what his supporters expect from him and what he can actually deliver.
Less than a month before balloting starts, all the polls give a healthy edge to the hardline incumbent. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows what working-class Iranians want, and in the run-up to the vote, he's been handing out heaps of cash saved up during the oil boom of 2007 and 2008. Still, Iranian pollsters and pundits have guessed wrong before. They counted Ahmadinejad out in the 2005 contest—until he won. Mousavi's team is hoping the unexpected will happen again. "The choice is now between democracy and an authoritarian government," said Mohammed Javad Mozafar, a historian in the crowd at Milad Hall. "If Ahmadinejad wins, that means the end of this reformist dream for a while. Many of these young people will be depressed and even leave the country. But if Mousavi wins, that means the citizens have won despite Ahmadinejad's deceitful policies and the support he receives from above." Although Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei doesn't stoop to publicly endorsing a candidate, few Iranians doubt that Ahmadinejad is his man.
But whose man is Mousavi? Even by the baffling standards of Iranian politics, he and his candidacy are a puzzle. His revolutionary zeal made him a leading figure in the Islamic Republic's early years. Trained as a painter and architect, he accomplished a protean feat after the fall of the shah in 1979, building a name for himself as both a committed leftist and a fiercely loyal follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He served as prime minister throughout most of the 1980s until he dropped out of politics in 1989, after Khomeini's death. Most supporters at this year's Milad Hall rally were too young to remember those times; the crowd's average age looked to be about 25. In fact, roughly 75 percent of Iranians are under 30. Mousavi is 68.
In the two decades since he left public life, Mousavi has devoted himself mainly to his first love: abstract painting. At the start of this year's race the reformists' standard bearer was not Mousavi but Ahmadinejad's immediate predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. Before the former president declared his candidacy, he spoke repeatedly to Mousavi about joining the race. Calling him "one of the best politicians in Iran," Khatami told newsweek that he'd urged Mousavi to enter the contest. "Every time Khatami asked Mousavi if he wanted to run, the answer was a big 'no'," says a Khatami adviser, asking not to be named talking about the two men's relationship.
So Khatami hit the stump, touring Iran for more than a month. Cheering crowds greeted him as the man to defeat Ahmadinejad and the conservative establishment. An Iranian intelligence official, requesting anonymity because he's not authorized to talk to reporters, cites a confidential December 2008 survey that ranked Khatami's popularity higher than that of any other public figure in Iran. And several people close to Khatami say that he was shocked when Mousavi changed his mind. "When he heard Mousavi's announcement, Khatami became so furious," says a Khatami confidant. "He said, 'I didn't know I would be betrayed like this'."
The decision should have been no surprise to Khatami. He had met with the Supreme Leader a few weeks before announcing his candidacy. "In the meeting Mr. Khamenei told Mr. Khatami as a friend that it would be better if he didn't enter the race," says a Khatami adviser, asking not to be quoted by name on such a sensitive subject. When Khatami went ahead and announced he'd run anyway, the adviser says Khamenei became quite upset and sent a personal message to Khatami asking him to step down. (Khatami denies that the Supreme Leader made any such request.) At the same time, Khatami's team heard rumors that there were plans to assassinate him if his campaign continued. The hardline newspaper Kayhan heightened the paranoia with an editorial purporting to warn Khatami that people in his own camp might want him dead. "The message was obvious," says the Khatami adviser. "Khatami would be gotten rid of one way or another. He had no choice but to withdraw." Khatami insists he stepped down simply to avoid splitting the reformist vote.
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