Secretary Rice was addressing the dilemma faced by all autocratic regimes. To improve their image at home and abroad, they sometimes like to schedule elections. Yet the rulers are desperately afraid and unwilling to yield any of their power. So they resort to a myriad of ways of rigging the elections.

Only a short distance from where Secretary Rice spoke, the ruling mullahs in Iran were providing textbook illustrations of some of the myriad of ways to rig a presidential election.

By way of background, the idea of Iranians electing a president is a sick joke. Everybody knows that the supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, holds ultimate authority in this theocracy. This has been Iran’s mode of government since the revolution in 1979. The outgoing President Khatami, who billed himself as a reformer, i.e., someone who would support social freedoms for the people, was a hopeless failure. Whenever he made a move in that direction, the mullahs, proponents of a conservative approach, i.e., their strict interpretation of Islamic law, brought out the revolutionary guards to beat and arrest those clamoring for reform.

That brings us to the current election and the tactics used by the mullahs to control the election.

Tactic 1: Select the names on the ballot.

More down 1,000 people asked that their names be placed on the ballot in the presidential election. The Guardian Council, a group controlled by the hard line clerics, which is in charge of the elections, only permitted eight of them to run. Four were veteran guard commanders.

Tactic 2: Use intimidation during the campaign.

Mostafa Moin, one of eight permitted to run, overcame widespread voter apathy by claiming he was a reformer. Moin was rising in the polls. Then bombs began exploding and conservatives attacked his supporters. Not surprisingly, attendance at his rallies began shrinking.

Tactic 3: Control the counting of ballots.

Under the election ground rules, if none of the candidates received at least fifty percent of the vote on the June 17 balloting, there was to be a run off election conducted on June 24th among the two who received the most votes. On the 18th an announcement was made that the run off would be between Ali Hashemi Rafsanjaini, a cleric and veteran politician, who has been part of the establishment since the revolution; and the mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a strongly conservative, strongly religious cleric who would repeal even those meager freedoms that have come about during the Khatami president. Even hard boiled cynics in Iran were astounded by this result. Based upon the polls, Ahmadinejad had very little support. Yet he was announced as having received 19.5 percent of the vote. Since the ballots are counted by the Guardian Council, vote rigging is almost certain to have occurred.

Tactic 4: Close down the press and stifle free speech.

One of the eight candidates, Mehdi Karrubi, a moderate cleric, who finished less than one percent behind Ahmadinejad, protested the vote count claiming “I was robbed” and “there were payoffs.” The government’s reaction was swift. Papers reporting his accusations were shut down and Karrubi was publicly warned that he was approaching a red line “nobody should cross.” Pleas to delay the run off while charges of voter fraud were investigated have been rejected.

Tactic 5: End with a result which will not pose a risk to the regime.

It doesn’t matter who wins the run off. The supreme leader and his appointees of ruling mullahs and henchmen will still be firmly entrenched. The people may have a minor degree of greater freedom one way or the other, but it will be insignificant. The theocracy will be intact.

Rafsanjanei is a survivor. Not a reformer. He will never make waves. That much is clear. It was a brilliant and cynical maneuver on the part of the ruling mullahs to have Rafsanjanei’s run off with an even more conservative candidate. If Rafsanjanei prevails, the people will feel as if they have won something, when in fact after the election it will be business as usual. If the ruling regime rigs the run off for Ahmadinejad, that will show their desire to clamp down even further on what little is left of reform. Either way, the Iranian nuclear program will continue to move forward with all of the risks that presents to the United States and Iran’s neighbors. And the Iranian people will continue to live in their theocratic straitjacket.