The world has been conspicuously silent over this week’s presidential election in Iran. Both in the US and Europe, officials dare not predict the outcome of what is shaping up as a closer contest than had been expected. And some admit that they do not fully understand how the Iranian system works.

Silence is, in any case, a safer policy, because no Iranian candidate wants to be known as the favourite of the west. Past experience also leads to caution. In 2005, some western capitals expected the more moderate (yet hugely unpopular) Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to carry the presidential vote, only to be presented with the victory of a fundamentalist, and little known, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.