But behind the regimes celebrations, which marked the government of the Islamic Republic's continued survival by a combination of brutal suppression and a highly effective security system controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, there are growing signs the financial crisis that has rocked Wall Street and world stock markets has begun to bite ever deeper into the Iranian economy.
A country which is awash with oil—Iran produces 4.3 million barrels a day and possesses the second largest reserve of oil—cannot provide sufficient quantities of refined material to meet the needs of its 65 million people.
An MI6 report states: "The reason for this state of affairs is clear. The regime's insistence on diverting an increasing amount of energy and resources in pursuit of the holy grail of nuclear enrichment and the subsequent UN economic sanctions that policy has attracted. It means the ayatollahs are unable to maintain the oil-refining facilities for domestic purposes".
In a pre-election rally before the Friday polls opened, President Ahmadinejad paraded his favourite claim that the sanctions have made no impact on the Iranian economy, insisting they were "only psychological window dressing promoted by Washington and its allies against us".
But the MI6 analysts—working with information which in part came from anti-regime sources in Iran—show the country's economic inflation is now at 19 percent and the regime has failed to meet any of its growth targets.
The result is that there is rationing of 100 litres a month of gasoline for each household—the equivalent of two full tanks for the average family car.
Voters went to the polls against a background of an estimated 30 percent of the nation's gas stations standing in ruins after last year's orgy of violence and destruction that swept the country in the worst outbreak of anti-government protests for more than a decade.
These were ruthlessly dealt with by the Revolutionary Guards. No one knows how many protesters were killed or are now imprisoned.
"But there is no doubt that the riots threw the regime into panic. The first sign of this is that Tehran recently ordered the withdrawal of millions of dollars worth of deposits from Iranian-owned banks in Europe and the Far East. It is intended as a pre-emptive move to prevent the money being frozen under further sanctions by the UN", revealed the MI6 report.
Three of Iran's major banks remain blacklisted by the US Treasury Department. They are Bank Saderat, because of its funding for Hezbollah, and Bank Sepah, suspected of providing finance for Iran's nuclear program. A third bank, the Meli Bank of Tehran, is also accused of funding for the program.
Now, with the regime having secured its hold over the population and signs that the Bush Administration will not proceed with military action against Iran, there is a mounting belief in President Ahmadinejad's regime that it can continue to survive by further belt-tightening.
"After all, if the West is being forced to do this, then so can we", he told voters before they went to the polling stations.
Gordon Thomas is the author of Secrets & Lies: A History of CIA Mind Control and Germ Warfare (Octavo Editions, USA) and the forthcoming Inside British Intelligence (JR Books, UK).
(C) G-2 Bulletin, Washington D.C., USA, and Gordon Thomas.
