Is the race really open?

FOR several months the odds-on favourite to win Iran's presidential election on May 23rd has been Ali Akbar Nateq-Noori, a conservative cleric who is speaker of parliament and is backed by Iran's powerful bazaari merchants. Indeed, he has been behaving as if the presidency were secure. Now an unexpected outsider is upsetting the odds: Mohammad Khatemi, favoured by the intellectual left, has launched a campaign that has jolted the right from its complacency. 'We're no longer so sure about Nateq-Noori,” says a newspaper editor. “His confidence is gone. He's just not talking like a president any more.”