Iran marches even more to the right

Just when you think the world can't take much more bad news, Iran votes in a new president who is about as conservative as you could get. Top judge and cleric Ebrahim Raisi sounds like a return to the days of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Stubborn, unyielding and totally anti-Western. I never understand the Iranians. There is a huge younger population, many of whom are desperate to enjoy the sort of life that much of the West takes for granted. But they still vote for a hard hardliner who will consider conceding anything to the international community as anathema. However, despite the bad omens, Raisi has said he wants to improve Iran's economy which will only be possible if he starts to talk to the US because he will have to find a way of lifting at least some of the strangling economic sanctions. It doesn't mean he will leap at the chance of holding a summit with Joe Biden and promise to stop violating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But if there is such a thing in the Farsi language as quid pro quo, then President-elect Raisi will need to offer something in return for less restrictive sanctions. If he doesn't, then the younger generation who voted for him or presumably voted for him if the election figures can be believed, will soon become disillusioned. Unfortunately, Iran is in the same ballpark as North Korea, although in a different way. Despite denials going back decades, Iran has been pursuing the capability to build nuclear bombs so as to be ready to develop them if needed as the ultimate blackmail weapon. They have gone a long way, despite relentless covert action by Israel, and are closer today than they were when the Obama nuclear deal was signed. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say over what happens with Iran's nuclear programme and he has always said it would be against Islam to develop nuclear weapons, but with Iran becoming even more conservative under the new leader Ebrahim Raisi, I doubt anyone in the White House, let alone Tel Aviv, is feeling happy about the election result.