When Is an Election Not an Election?
Michael Ledeen explains the Iranian farce:

Whoever is “elected” (and you can be sure that the outcome is already known, millions of “officially cast” ballots having been manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast) will be an instrument of the mullahcracy. The sole “issue” in the farce is how best to convince George W. Bush that it would be wrong for the United States to press on with support for the forces of freedom in Iran, because that would “force” the mullahs to crack down (which they are doing already). The slogan for the post-electoral period will be “give reform a chance.” And you can be sure that the useful idiots among us, from the Amanpour woman at CNN to the Haass man at the Council on Foreign Relations, have already prepared their sermons and their slogans, ranging from “hopes for a new relationship” to “a rare opportunity for an historic dialogue,” and other such slogans.

The Beeb wants to believe

the critical issues for most Iranians will be whether the country continues on the path of social reform, and how best to solve its strained relations with the outside world.

What path of social reform, they don’t specify. You’re to assume they are in “the path of social reform”, whatever that means.

Too bad the Beeb doesn’t visit Publius Pundit, or Reuters; they’d have realized that

Unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among the first to vote, told Iranians they would be endorsing not just their chosen candidate, but their country’s Islamic system.

“Whoever you vote for among those seven candidates, it’s a vote for him, the Islamic republic and the constitution,” he said after using a special ballot box at his official residence.

“The path of social reform”? Yeah, right.

(About the Ayatollahs, read what the late Paul Paul Klebnikov, murdered last year in Russia, wrote on Millionaire Mullahs: A looming nuclear threat to the rest of the world, Iran is robbing its own people of prosperity. But the men at the top are getting extremely rich)