Iran's Khatami Pulls Out of Iran Presidential Race To Help Get Ahmadinejad Voted Out

A few months ago I blogged here about the serious bid for the Presidency of Iran by former leader Mohammed Khatami that could spell some trouble for current President Ahmadinejad. Well, today, Khatami has bowed out of the race and no, it wasn't because he got strong-armed or anything. It's because another contender for the Reform Party has thrown his hat in the ring and that person, Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former Prime Minister, will be able to get more total votes, according to Khatami. It would be a bit like Bob Barr withdrawing from the 2008 Presidential election here so that John McCain could use his votes - course, that didn't happen here. Here's some of the details from the Breitbart article:

Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says he has pulled out of the race against the country's hard-line president to avoid splitting the pro-reform vote.
Khatami says he will not run in the June 12 election so change will be easier to achieve. A copy of Monday's statement was made available to The Associated Press.
Khatami's entry into the race against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a month ago boosted the hopes of some reformists, who favor improving ties with the West and liberalizing Iran's conservative Islamic government.

One of them, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, is a former hard-liner who Khatami has said has a better chance of siphoning conservatives' votes.

Mousavi, some believe, is better positioned to draw conservatives who have grown disenchanted with Ahmadinejad. The former prime minister, who announced his candidacy last week, is remembered well by many Iranians for managing the country during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, and has strong enough revolutionary credentials to appeal to Ahmadinejad's base.

Now, I may be crazy but I think this Reform candidate, Mousavi, might just have a chance in this election. Iran's economy is horrible and the people in general, really got behind Ahmadinejad the first election because they saw him as "one of them." And he's let them down big time (sound familiar, anyone?). Now, no one gets the Presidency in Iran without the final kiss off of the Ayatollah but this just might surprise some people.

Khatami pulls out of Iran's presidential race

The other reformist candidate in the race, former parliament speaker Mahdi Karroubi, has repeatedly said he won't drop out regardless of who else is running, but his party was meeting Monday to assess the situation.
Reformers believe they have a strong chance of unseating Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005 but has lost popularity because of his handling of the country's faltering economy and other issues. But the maneuvers in the reformist camp reflect a debate over the best strategy for defeating the hard-liner.
Khatami, a liberal cleric who was president in 1997-2005, is the best known internationally among Iran's reformist politicians and is also popular at home, particularly among the young. But some reformists have worried that his candidacy will galvanize the hard-line camp, which strongly dislikes Khatami because they believe he aims to fundamentally change the nature of Iran's Islamic state.
Mousavi, some believe, is better positioned to draw conservatives who have grown disenchanted with Ahmadinejad. The former prime minister, who announced his candidacy last week, is remembered well by many Iranians for managing the country during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, and has strong enough revolutionary credentials to appeal to Ahmadinejad's base.
Khatami has said previously that he and Mousavi would not compete against each other. On Sunday he acknowledged the advantages Mousavi holds in the race.
"Rest assured that Mousavi will recruit a remarkable percentage of votes from the other side. I have reports that some conservatives will not vote for me or (Ahmadinejad), but they would definitely vote for Mousavi," Khatami told supporters.
But, on the other end of the spectrum, Mousavi could dampen enthusiasm among the reformists, whose electoral landslides in the late 1990s depended on massive turnout among the youth, excited at the prospect of change.
"This is a major setback for the reformist camp as a whole. Mousavi is not likely to bring back young Iranians who have been on the political sidelines," said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a political and religious researcher and Iran specialist at New York's Syracuse University.
"Mousavi doesn't speak the reformers' language. He might try to soften his message to appeal to them, but he still echoes the past to many people," he said.
Prominent political analyst, Saeed Leilaz, said Mousavi is the stronger candidate because he "can liquidate Ahmadinejad's support base," while Khatami "unifies hard-liners." But, he added, Mousavi won't be able to pull in the votes of all Khatami backers.
The election is vital for reformists because they have spent much of the past years in decline. While Khatami was still in office, hard-liners blocked many of his reforms through cleric-led bodies that have powers over the government under Iran's Islamic system. Those same bodies broke reformists' hold on parliament by using their powers to prevent reformist lawmakers from running for re-election. By the 2005 election—in which Khatami could not run because of term limits—the reformists were in disarray and largely eclipsed.