There can be few leaders who burst into tears at the virtual certainty of scoring an overwhelming victory in forthcoming elections. But when, last month, a reluctant President Muhammad Khatami announced that he would, after all, be standing for a second four-year term, he choked with emotion as he spoke of that apparently none-too joyful prospect.
In outward form, at least, Iran is already a democracy, in which the course of events is shaped by regular elections, the last three of which produced the same outcome: an overwhelming mandate for Khatami. He will triumph again.
He has nine opponents, but it is not really a choice between him and them, more like a referendum in which the people will pronounce their verdict on the power struggle that pits him and his reformist followers against "The Leader", Ali Khamenei, and the conservatives.
Each embodies a rival version of political Islam, representing the contrast between the "civil society" - self-styledly rational, modernist, liberal, humanist - of the one and the reactionary, xenophobic, clerical authoritarianism of the other.
The only real question is the size of the turnout for Khatami, but it won't necessarily make much difference in the end. For experience shows that, while Iranian elections may show which rulers the people would like, they don't truly install them in authority.
That, in essence, is why Khatami wept; he knows that, however massive the turnout, he won't be able to do what he is elected to do. The Islamic Republic rests on two basic concepts: the "sacred", reflecting the sovereignty of God over the affairs of the people, and the "popular", reflecting the people's sovereignty over itself.
Each concept has its own rival institutions. On the "sacred" side, the key one is the Leadership, the Velayat al-Fakih (The Guardianship of the Religious Jurisprudent). "The Leader" is appointed, in theory by God, in practice by the clique of essentially unelected clerical oligarchs who control the "sacred" institutions. On the "popular" side, the institution that really matters is the parliament.
That is why it had been hoped that last year's parliamentary elections would clinch the controversy over whether Islam is compatible with democracy. But it was not to be.
Before the elections, the conservatives had dominated the parliament; so, on the face of it at least, "popular" and divine sovereignty were in tolerable harmony. But when the reformists triumphed there, too, the legislature suddenly presented an open challenge to the ascendancy of the "sacred" institutions. In response, the conservatives swiftly made it clear that they would never voluntarily cede power through the ballot box.
They were ideologically and organisationally prepared for all the anti-democratic violence, coercion and intimidation required to defy the popular will.
A FEW MONTHS into the new parliament, Kham enei personally stepped in to demolish what the reformists had long regarded as a cornerstone of their "civil society": a free press. He sent a "letter" to parliament decreeing that it had no authority to debate the subject. More than 40 reformist newspapers have been closed since this intervention.
Thereafter, using the blatantly partisan judiciary, the conservatives have pressed on with an escalating anti-democratic offensive. Dozens of Khatami's supporters - ministers, high officials, journalists, student leaders, clerics and laymen - have been tried, imprisoned, punished or forced from office.
Another electoral triumph will not reduce Khatami's dilemma, or spare him the choice between two alternatives. The first is to go on humouring Khamenei and the conservatives to the point where, in practice, he might just as well be one of them. The other is to heed his constituency and embark on an open showdown with the conservatives. Otherwise, he risks losing it. Khatami has so far shielded the whole regime from the growing frustration of many of the people and their clamour for fundamental change.
There is a widespread expectation that if, in his second term, the conservatives continue to block him at every turn, change will no longer be coming through constitutionally-scheduled elections, but through the unscheduled popular "explosion" of which he himself has warned; shaking the Republic to its foundations.