TEHRAN, June 19: Iranians on Sunday grappled with a stark choice after moderate leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and an austere hardliner made it into a presidential run-off vote, with defeated reformists agonising over whether to take part.

The opposition has already cried foul over alleged rigging in Friday’s first-round poll, where Tehran’s ultra-conservative mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad leapt into a shock second place to reach a tense run-off with Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The main reformist candidate Mostafa Moin was left trailing in fifth place with less than 14 per cent of the vote, the latest blow for a once emboldened movement which has seen its tenuous place in power slip away.

Friday’s unprecedented run-off will be one of the most crucial political battles in recent Iranian history, as Mr Ahmadinejad’s win would leave every institution in Iran held by the anti-Western far-right.

It could also be tight, as in the first round Mr Rafsanjani won 20 per cent and Mr Ahmadinejad won 19.47.

But liberals now face an awkward choice between giving their explicit support to Hashemi Rafsanjani or urging a boycott of the vote and thus risk a victory by Mahmood Ahmadinejad.

Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, a dissident human rights lawyer, said she would not vote.

“As long as there is this supervisory law on elections I will not take part in any election,” Ms Ebadi told AFP, referring to the power of unelected hardliners to choose who can actually contest for public office.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is not elected, also holds absolute power regardless of who is president.

“I will not vote,” said Hashem Aghajari, once sentenced to death for blasphemy. “The problem is the power of the non-elected institutions and the president can do nothing.”— AFP