Hard-Line Figure In Iran Runoff

Candidates Accuse Security Forces of Voter Intimidation

TEHRAN, June 18 -- The hard-line, working-class mayor of Tehran will face former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a millionaire cleric, in a runoff election for Iran's presidency next week, according to first-round results announced Saturday.

Rafsanjani, who came in first, had been a favorite in recent polls. But the close second-place finish by Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who trailed by 400,000 votes, stunned the field of better-known, better-financed candidates.

Two of the candidates charged that militias and uniformed Revolutionary Guards had intimidated voters at polling places on behalf of Ahmadinejad. Mehdi Karrubi, a moderate cleric who finished a close third, appealed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to investigate the allegations. Karrubi enjoys friendly relations with Khamenei, who holds the title of Supreme Leader and has ultimate authority in Iran.

The allegation was seconded by campaign aides to Mostafa Moin, the most prominent reformist candidate. Moin finished a distant fifth despite a higher-than-expected turnout that many in the reformist camp thought would improve their standing.

If Ahmadinejad's second-place finish holds, the runoff set for Friday sizes up as a contest between candidates who say that Iran would become a stronger nation by turning outward, as represented by Rafsanjani, and those who see its success as rooted in the religious zeal that served as the foundation for this theocracy, as advocated by Ahmadinejad.

The matchup also carries strong undercurrents of social class conflict.

Rafsanjani, 70, often is called the wealthiest man in Iran. He served two terms as president in the 1980s, a time of often frequent and fierce government crackdowns on human rights. But in wooing the young voters who now dominate Iranian politics, Rafsanjani updated his image as a "pragmatic conservative."

In his $5 million campaign, Rafsanjani vowed to bring an insider's heft to the reformist program of the outgoing president, Mohammad Khatami, to open Iran's cloistered economy to foreign investment and to promote "detente" with the United States, which severed ties with Iran after Islamic radicals took over the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Rafsanjani is "probably the biggest heavyweight figure in the country, whether he wins the presidency or not," said Mohammad Attrianfar, a newspaper publisher who supported him.

Ahmadinejad campaigned as a paragon of modest loyalty to the ideals of the theocracy. His career includes a stint as an instructor for the basij , a militia long feared for its strict enforcement of Islamic social codes and zealous attacks on student demonstrators protesting the closing of newspapers and jailing of professors.

Ahmadinejad, who still wears his beard and hair in the slightly scruffy style of the basij, was elected mayor of the vast capital two years ago, when frustration with Khatami's inability to push through reforms first began to translate into voter apathy. Turnout in the municipal election was barely 10 percent, low enough for the hard-liners' loyal core to prevail.

One of Ahmadinejad's most high-profile acts as mayor was converting the city's cultural centers into religious centers. While stumping for president, he has called for serving the poor as a way to make Iran an example to the Shiite vision of "global Islam." He has expressed less enthusiasm for renewing relations with the United States.

"He's performed very well as mayor," said Ghasem Ajam Majmohammadi, 33, after casting a ballot for Ahmadinejad. "And he's from the lower middle class, so he knows people very well."