Interesting article in the LA Times on the upcoming Iranian election. First he points out that this is a real election with opposing world views on offer. The rerformists are against the foreign policy of Ahmadinejad. 
Supreme Leader Khameini favours the Ahmadinejad’s struggle against an unjust world power stance. However that other powerful figures, such as Rafsanjani, believe that the confrontational stance has been detrimental to Iran. A conservative win can be interpreted as a mandate for A. to continue his rhetoric and struggle. This would facilitate D. Ross’s containment plans at the State Department. If Mousavi wins, there could be room for real rapprochement.
The moderates have reached the conclusion that the animosity with the United States is detrimental to Iran’s national interest and that it has suffered immensely as a result of waging, as it were, an ideological war with the United States.
The hard-liners see themselves as the leading historical worldwide crusade against U.S. “arrogance” and the world order. They regard themselves as . . . the vanguard of a universal struggle against the domination of the Western powers.
Support for the nuclear program appears to span party lines and interesting to see it referred to as an insurance policy.
A substantial reason for the Iranian insistence on the nuclear program is that they have realized that this is an insurance policy . . . that every country that has a nuclear industry, nuclear capability, has not been invaded [or] attacked by any other state. That does not necessarily mean building atomic weapons, but to become a nuclear power. The psychological feeling of insecurity has driven Iranian leaders toward insisting on becoming nuclear.
Posted by Dan 
As reported by 
