Five years after the invasion of Iraq, there is still no certainty as to the outcome of the fluctuating, complex struggle to determine the destiny of Iraq, a struggle with huge implications not only for the entire Middle East, but for the successful containment of Islamist extremism. Over the next week, The Times will be reviewing the decisions to go to war, the aftermath, and assessing Iraq's prospects. In the five years to come, the issue that hovers today, much as Iraq loomed in 2003, is Iran. The question is whether Tehran remains bent on reducing its neighbour to armed anarchy, or is prepared to stop fomenting enmity between the Sunni and Shia communities and, in the southern provinces, desist from arming its supporters among the rival Shia factions.

This month Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, swept triumphantly into Baghdad, ostentatiously declaring support for a “unified and independent Iraq” while brushing aside evidence of his sabotaging that objective. For the Shia-dominated Iraqi Government, and also for the United States, this was a necessary exercise in realpolitik, although it is far from clear that his hosts pressed him hard enough on Iran's meddling to reassure Sunnis, who are deeply suspicious of Iran's intentions. So long as the hardline Mr Ahmadinejad heads Iran's Government, those suspicions will be justified. The suffering of Iraqis weighs with him almost not at all, set against the opportunity he sees to humiliate the “Great Satan” by thwarting American efforts to set Iraq on the road to recovery.

The great interest of the Iranian parliamentary elections taking place tomorrow is thus whether this Islamist firebrand will emerge stronger than before, or with his wings clipped and his position for the 2009 presidential elections eroded.

The runes will not be easy to read, even for Iranians. This election will not pit reformists against conservatives. The religious powers have seen to that, by barring no fewer than 1,700 reformist candidates from running, stepping up the persecution of dissidents and closing any publication that could remotely be described as liberal. The only serious political challengers left in the ring are rivals who share his rigid religious conservatism, but who have come to see him as an economic dunce and a political liability.

The issues that most concern the West - the regime's mischief-making in Iraq, public calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, and suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons - do not figure in the campaign. Indeed, no issues figure, not even Iran's economic woes, because of a near-total ban on campaign literature. Official media ram home one message only: the duty to vote.

Devoid of rallies, or even formal party platforms, this non-campaign has drained the blood out of Iran's distorted but once lively elections. There is widespread contempt for the establishment that could translate into the only rebuke people have available, a refusal to turn out. But Iranians do care, passionately, about Mr Ahmadinejad's economic follies. His spending spree has neither helped the poor as he promised, nor eased mass youth unemployment, but has sent inflation soaring. They are angry that the world's fourth-largest oil producer has been reduced to petrol rationing. And many, the young in particular, chafe at the international isolation visited on Iran by its nuclear defiance. Great- power unity on Iran has been extremely hard to forge, even for mild UN sanctions. But there are indications that these sanctions are biting. They may not trouble Mr Ahmadinejad, but they do trouble businessmen, scientists and at least some of the clerical elite. The world wants Iran in from the cold, and most Iranians share that goal. This election may give some clues to the length of the wait before Iran makes the necessary moves.