The most encouraging feature of the Iranian election campaign, for those who want a moderate to win, is that candidates are mocking President Ahmadinejad for claiming that a light surrounded him during his speech in 2005 to the United Nations General Assembly.

If Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main rival, can deride the President for these mystical claims, then that is a sign that his authority and popular appeal may be waning. But the real battle is still over the economy. Mousavi’s best claim is that inflation hit nearly 30 per cent in October, compared with 11 per cent when Ahmadinejad swept to power in the 2005 elections. Ahmadinejad’s best retort is that it is now half that figure — confirmed by the Central Bank of Iran yesterday.

The flavour of Mousavi’s campaign has become clear only in the past week or so, as Ahmadinejad’s previously solid lead has fractured. Of the four candidates approved to run for the presidency in Friday’s vote, two are so-called moderates. Mousavi, Prime Minister during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, is by far the stronger of the two.

But he is not quite the reformer that some in the US and Europe have wistfully claimed. He is a moderate in comparison to Ahmadinejad, certainly. But that does not mean he supports a reversal in the nuclear ambitions and tactics in Iraq that have presented such problems for the US and Britain.

His most welcome tack, from Western governments’ point of view, has been to criticise Ahmadinejad for isolating Iran from the world, for mismanaging the economy, and for indulging himself in nonsensical mystical claims. A newspaper that Mousavi controls has made fun of Ahmadinejad for claiming that in his controversial address to the UN General Assembly, the first time the wider world had much exposure to his views, he claimed that “a light surrounded [me]“ and that no one in the audience blinked for more than 20 minutes, because they were so captivated by his message.

Mousavi also argues that Ahmadinejad has broken his campaign promise to turn the benefits of the oil boom over to ordinary people. One of Iranians’ biggest gripes is inflation, running at about 30 per cent last year. Mousavi’s vow to tackle this by boosting domestic production and through monetary policy at least has a modern ring of economic literacy. But his claim that Ahmadinejad is lying about current inflation, claiming it is only 15 per cent, not 25 per cent, was not helped yesterday by the Central Bank, which supported the lower figure.

Mousavi’s views in those areas are encouraging, suggesting that Iran, under a new president, could become a more normal country. But his desire for warmer relations with the West is treacherously easy to misinterpret. He has praised Iran’s nuclear programme, the biggest source of friction with other countries. We don’t know his views, in subtle detail, on relations with Iraq, but given his leadership of Iran at the time of the bitter, bloody war with Saddam Hussein, it is entirely plausible that he would want to strengthen ties with the new regime, and generally to make the most of Iran’s influence there. That is not exactly what the US and others might wish.

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