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| | Empire Notes |
 | | Later, at Khamenei's insistence, they reinstated the reformist candidate Mostafa Moeen and a few others. |
 | | Once the Council reversed itself, and even without including real reform candidates like Reza Khatami, the main candidates offered a far wider range of viable political choices than did the last American election. |
 | | The front-runner, with 21%, is former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, generally called a moderate, but who calls himself a "fundamentalist reformer." Second, with 19.5%, is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guard and a hard-line conservative who has much support among the poor. |
| www.empirenotes.org /06202005commentary.html (835 words) |
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