Nearly 39 million Iranians are eligible to vote today in the country's sixth and most important parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution overthrew the shah. The poll could mark a turning point in Iranian history, a landmark on the long road to establishing a genuine Islamic democracy.
At stake are the credibility and future power of the reformist President, Mr Mohamed Khatami, who received an astonishing 70 per cent of the vote in the May 1997 presidential election.
Mr Khatami, a gentle philosopher and theologian, continues to be popular, but his efforts to ensure respect for human rights in Iran and to improve relations with the West are thwarted by religious conservatives who rally around Ayatollah Khomeini's heir as Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Iranian constitution places the Guide above all elected officials, including the President.
Mr Khatami's reformers began calling themselves the 2 Khordad Movement a year ago, when they won Iran's first local elections. (2 Khordad corresponds to May 23rd on the western calendar, the day Mr Khatami was elected.) His supporters have joined dozens of pro-reform groups in a new Participation Front, while the conservatives have banded together in the Coalition of the Line of the Imam and Guide.
Although the reformers are considered left-wing and the conservatives right-wing, both are Islamic. Candidates must still prove their Islamic credentials; no one admits the possibility of allowing secular political parties.
The conservative right has used its control of the 1996 parliament to cripple Mr Khatami. The majlis forced Mr Khatami's close friend and former interior minister, Mr Abdullah Nouri, to resign in 1998. The conservatives also control the judiciary system, and last November Mr Nouri, who is like President Khatami a Muslim cleric, was sentenced to five years in prison for "anti-Islamic propaganda".
The majlis has also repeatedly tried to impeach Mr Khatami's reformist Culture Minister, Mr Ataollah Mohajerrani. Last July it passed a rigid press law in the hope of stifling the reformers' much-read newspapers.
If the left-leaning reformers gain control of a majority of the 290 seats in the majlis, Mr Khatami's ministers will be able to act more confidently. If they win, the left wants to call a referendum to purge and reform the judiciary.
Mr Nouri, who has been imprisoned since November, was to have led the reformers' campaign. Symbolically, his younger brother, Dr Ali-Reza Nouri, is a Participation Front candidate in Tehran. To head their campaign, the reformers chose another medical doctor, Dr Mohamed Reza Khatami (40), the President's urologist brother. In just a few weeks, the hitherto little-known Dr Khatami, who was wounded in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, has become extremely popular.
The conservatives are thought to command about one-third of the vote from their network of mosques and foundations throughout the country. The voting system may favour them in the first round, but the reformers are expected to win in the second, which should take place in about two weeks. The greatest danger for the reformers is that those who voted for Mr Khatami in 1997 may be so disillusioned by the slow pace of change that they boycott the poll.
The conservatives staged a public relations coup by enlisting the former president, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to lead their campaign. Mr Raf sanjani is one of the most talented post-revolution politicians, having held the post of speaker of the majlis from 1981 until 1989 and then serving two terms as president of Iran, until 1997.
His role in the parliamentary campaign has been ambiguous, since he initially implied he supported the Khatami camp. Many on the left bear a grudge against Mr Rafsanjani for his timid condemnation of a series of assassinations of intellectuals in late 1998.
Two events this week showed how conservatives and reformers are playing their long game of chess. On February 14th three powerful groups controlled by the conservatives announced that the fatwa against the British writer Salman Rushdie still stood, an obvious attempt to embarrass the reformers.
Two days later the leader of Iran's Jewish community announced he had received government assurances that 13 Jews arrested last year and charged with spying for Israel would be freed soon. The affair of the 13 Jews has poisoned President Khatami's efforts to normalise relations with the West.