Forecasting results is hampered by a lack of reliable opinion polls but some early voters for Tehran City Council, the most high profile of Friday's races, stood behind the president.

"Ahmadinejad is a gentleman. He has done a lot of good works for the people. I will vote for his supporters," said Javad Zerangi, 65, a bus ticket seller queuing to vote in south Tehran, a poorer area where the president is generally popular.

Ahmadinejad, the son of a blacksmith who says the government must be more in touch with people, waited in line for about half an hour to vote at a mosque in east Tehran, witnesses said.

Ahmadinejad's anti-Western and anti-Israel statements have alarmed the West. Any indication his popularity is waning is likely to be taken as a welcome sign among Western countries worried Iran is building nuclear arms. Iran denies this.

But Ahmadinejad's vow to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly still wins him the backing of many of the Islamic Republic's poor, even if many also grumble about rising prices, which economists blame on the president's spending policies.

SEEKING A COMEBACK

In the Tehran race, the conservative camp is split between Ahmadinejad's backers, called "The Pleasant Scent of Servitude", and supporters of Tehran mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

Iran's reform movement, defeated in 2003 council polls and subsequent parliamentary and presidential races, is seeking a comeback but it does not expect to make sweeping gains.

Much may depend on the turnout of Iran's 46.5 million eligible voters, who will choose between around 233,000 candidates for more than 113,000 city and rural council posts.

In the 2003 council race, turnout was a modest 49 percent, and just 12 percent in Tehran. Many voters were disenchanted with ruling reformists who failed to deliver a freer society.

Iranians will also choose the 86-member Assembly of Experts, which appointed, supervises and can unseat Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 67, the country's highest authority.

Khamenei urged Iranians to do their "revolutionary and national duty" and vote after he cast his own ballot.

Although it holds powers even parliament or the president cannot boast, the assembly is dominated by traditional conservative clerics who have kept a low profile and are never known to have challenged Khamenei's actions.

That race is dominated by two rivals, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a mid-ranking cleric who has been at the heart of decision-making in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and a top-ranking theologian, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, widely seen as Ahmadinejad's mentor.

Polling stations are due to close at 7.00 p.m. (1530 GMT), although in past elections voting has often been extended. Results may not be released until late on Sunday.

In national elections today, many Iranians view the vote as a referendum on Ahmadinejad's performance. City council races nationwide focus on who can do more to improve people's daily lives, with some candidates vowing to accomplish what they say the president has failed to do. And candidates for a key national assembly of Muslim clergy are clashing over how much power Iran's supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should wield.

But at both the local and national levels, the races pit supporters of Ahmadinejad against members of the reformist movement, which pushes for democratization within Iran's Islamic government. And in some cases, traditional conservatives have banded together with reformists to oppose Ahmadinejad allies.

Reformist candidates are taking a page from Ahmadinejad's play book, emphasizing bread-and-butter issues like the need for better public transportation and more accountable city officials instead of the human rights and freedom of speech themes they've sounded in the past.

"We need to show the world that we are more practical," said Piruz Hanochi, an architect running on the reformist ticket for Tehran's city council. "After the election, people's lives have to become better."

To the outside world, Ahmadinejad (pronounced ah-MAHDI-ne-JAD) is best known for spurring confrontation with the West -- restarting the uranium enrichment program that the United States believes is aimed at making a nuclear bomb; denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map"; and declaring that Iranian influence should replace American sway in the Middle East.

But to Iranians, the president is controversial for a different reason: In May 2005, Ahmadinejad, a newcomer to the national political scene, shocked the country's reformists by trouncing their veteran candidate, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Reformists had led the country through more than a decade of gradual social and political liberalization, relaxing religious dress codes and allowing more press freedoms under former president Mohammad Khatami. But their focus on ideology eventually soured as Iranians increasingly struggled with double-digit inflation and rising youth unemployment in a country where 70 percent of the population is under age 30.

Some of that disappointment is now being directed at Ahmadinejad, even among some of his core supporters.

Amirhussein Jaharuti is a natural Ahmadinejad voter, a strong believer in the 1979 Iranian revolution whose older brother died in the 1980-88 war with Iraq and who says the president's tough stances against the West have defended his country's honor. He voted for Ahmadinejad, but now plans to split his vote in the local races between reformists and pro-Ahmadinejad candidates because the president hasn't delivered enough.

"I'm sure he wants a better life for Iranians, but his policies haven't provided it," said Jaharuti, co-owner of an Internet provider in Tehran. "He is like a pilot who can't fly very well -- he doesn't mean to kill anyone."
Article Tools

* PRINTER FRIENDLYPrinter friendly
* SINGLE PAGESingle page
* E-MAILE-mail to a friend
* RSS FEEDSWorld RSS feed
* RSS FEEDSAvailable RSS feeds
* MOST E-MAILEDMost e-mailed
* REPRINTS & LICENSINGReprints & Licensing
* Share on Facebook
* Tag with Del.icio.us Save this article
* powered by Del.icio.us

More:

* Globe World stories |
* Latest world news |
* Globe front page |
* Boston.com

* Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail |
* Breaking News Alerts

Traditional religious conservatives with a pro-business bent -- the heart of Iran's bazaar culture and a base of support for the revolution -- are also skeptical of Ahmadinejad's policies, which briefly raised the minimum wage, spent more oil money on imports, and handed out patronage.

"We are against fat governments," said Asadullah Badamchian, a leader of the Islamic Coalition, Iran's oldest Islamic party, which is backing Ahmadinejad's city council candidates, but with reservations. "We think that, as in America, big companies should have influence in economic policies."

Inflation this year hit 15 percent, according to official figures, but independent analysts have put the figure at closer to 25 percent. Growth over the past two years has slowed from 7.5 percent a year to 5 percent.

Even more dissatisfied with Ahmadinejad are young, urban, middle-class Iranians. They are the backbone of reformist support, and many sat out presidential elections last year to register their disillusion with the system. That decision helped bring Ahmadinejad to power.

Now, the reformists are trying to make a comeback, focusing on getting out the vote and reminding voters of the liberalization they enjoyed under Khatami, who was president from 1997 to 2005.

"We are the companions of Khatami," reads a yellow campaign poster for reformist candidates in Isfahan, about 240 miles southwest of Tehran.

The city of 1.5 million is part of Iran's conservative heartland, but many young people here said Ahmadinejad's tenure had emboldened vigilante groups who patrol the streets to enforce strict Islamic order, making it harder for young men and women to socialize, without delivering the economic improvements he promised.

"It was a mistake not to vote last time," said Mohammad Paknegad, 24, a Khatami supporter who is studying English and who works nights as a cashier in a tea shop under the Si-o-Seh Bridge, where the Zayandeh river rushes between tables of young men smoking waterpipes beneath the narrow arches. "Things got worse."

But many voters in Tehran and Isfahan say they don't believe their vote makes a difference -- especially after many reformist candidates were rejected as unqualified or unsuitable by the Guardian Council, a powerful body of clerics appointed by the supreme leader.

"This is far from democracy," said Sayyid Ali Mirhadi, a reformist cleric from the National Trust party, which backs a coalition of reformist and conservative candidates -- led by Rafsanjani -- for the Assembly of Experts. The 86-member body chooses the supreme leader, the cleric who is the ultimate authority in Iran, and at least theoretically supervises him.

Mirhadi's slate of candidates wants the council to exercise more of its supervisory power, while their opponents -- led by Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor, Mohammed Taghi Mesbah Yazdi -- want the supreme leader to have virtually unlimited power.

"The leader of the Islamic Republic is the leader of the Muslim world, so we cannot put any limits on him," said Mohammad Ali Ramin, an adviser to Ahmadinejad and a backer of the Yazdi group.

Those views so trouble traditional conservatives like the Islamic Coalition that they are backing Rafsanjani's slate of candidates despite their cultural disputes with reformists.

Ramin, a top campaign adviser to Ahmadinejad's allies, buses supporters to large rallies where their opponents are painted as wealthy, secular Iranians against a humble, religious man.

"God helped us to elect Ahmadinejad," said one student speaker at a Tehran rally last week. "Now the enemies of Islam are disapproving of him."

"This confession shows the real threat to security and stability in the Middle East, and it shows this regime's evil plans to carry out threats, a terror strategy and continued occupation," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini said.

"It is extremely necessary to adopt fast and efficient solutions on the UN Security Council and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and other regional organisations to combat these clear threats," he said.

Israel, which Iran does not recognise, is Tehran's arch-foe. It has repeatedly called for UN action over Iran's nuclear program and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel comments.

The Arab League urged the international community and the Security Council to exert pressure on Israel "to open its nuclear facilities in a transparent manner".

"It is essential that Israel comply with international resolutions," Mohammed Sobeih, the assistant secretary general in charge of Palestinian affairs, told reporters in Cairo.

The 22-member body called on "all states which offered assistance to Israel, particularly on the issues of uranium and heavy water, to speak out without delay", he said.

"Everyone knows that Israel possesses weapons of mass destruction which could reach as far as 2000km, and all Arab capitals are within this range," Mr Sobeih said.

Today the Gulf Cooperation Council - grouping Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - demanded that sanctions be imposed on Israel.

GCC Secretary General Abderrahman al-Attiya called on the United States not to apply a policy of "double standards" and to "work for the application (against Israel) of the resolutions of international legitimacy and of Chapter VII".

Chapter VII of the UN charter deals with action the Security Council might take regarding threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.

As a first step, it says the council may call for member states to impose sanctions, including complete or partial interruption of economic relations and the severance of diplomatic relations.

If such measures fail, military action can be called for.

In an interview yesterday with German television, Mr Olmert listed Israel as a country with nuclear weapons.

"We never threatened any nation with annihilation," he said.

"Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as France, America, Russia and Israel?" he asked.

Mr Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisin was quick to deny that the prime minister admitted Israel had nuclear weapons, saying "Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region".

In a German television interview broadcast on Monday, Olmert said: "Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"

Olmert aides said the remarks did not constitute an admission that Israel had atomic weapons.

Leading opposition lawmakers in Israel have accused Olmert of undermining Israel's campaign to curb the atomic ambitions of Iran with his remarks.

Independent analysts believe Israel has built up to 200 nuclear warheads since the late 1960s. Israel refuses to discuss the matter, under an "ambiguity" policy aimed both at deterring regional foes and avoiding an arms race.

Increasing rhetoric
The reticence is a major grievance for Iran, which sees a double standard in Western calls for Tehran to accept checks on a nuclear program that it says is for civilian use.

"Iran recommends that the Security Council place emphasis on combating the open and real threats of the nuclear weapons capabilities, instead of putting unreal issues on its agenda," Hosseini said.

Iran and Israel have traded increasingly confrontational rhetoric and accusations in recent months.

In an interview with Germany's Spiegel magazine last week Olmert called for dramatic measures against Iran and declined to rule out a military attack against the Islamic Republic.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday on Israel would soon be consigned to history, as happened to the Soviet Union.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.