Genie of democracy won't go back in the jar

There is an Iranian expression which became pregnant with meaning during the lead-up to the country's most vivid and exciting post-revolution election: mardum salari. It means "rule of the people", a phrase that emerged during the period of the so-called Tehran Spring, where the reformist movement attempted to transform the language of Iran's politics: to move away from the harsh slogans of the Islamic revolution to a more politically encompassing lexicon, embracing ideas of equality and political rights.

Whatever happened this weekend, the reformists' ideas have had enough traction to see Iran's politics gradually transformed. Even the man accused by his detractors yesterday of electoral theft, conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been forced to present himself in the terms of mardum salari, albeit a populist version.

Ahmadinejad has adopted the guise of "a man of the people"; an enemy of elites and corruption; a figure who, via his long travels through Iran's provinces, has displayed himself as accessible, whereas the country's supreme leadership remains remote.

This is a man deeply anxious to be wrapped in the illusion, if not the reality, of a large popular mandate. Which leaves Ahmadinejad with a problem. What is to be done about the wishes of the tens of millions who voted for his rival, Mir Hussein Mousavi?

It is not only Ahmadinejad who must negotiate the challenge of dealing with the huge block of Mousavi supporters. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad's chief sponsor, has the same problem. For, if last week's elections have proved one thing, it is that the reformist movement, which some had begun to write off as a spent force, is still appealing to huge numbers of Iranians. Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, if they do not want to deepen the fractious competition between reformists and conservatives, and between conservatives and a faction of hardliners, will have to find a way to negotiate those divisions to avert a political crisis.

In the immediate aftermath of the elections, the fear is that their answer will be the tactics of suppression used against the left at the beginning of the revolution. But those were different times. These days, for the revolution to continue it must appeal to new groups that have flourished under its aegis, not least those it has educated, who are often conservative yet find themselves frustrated at their country's stunted economic and political development.

And there is a still bigger challenge, one born of the campaign itself. The democratic process caught the collective Iranian imagination, following a series of enthralling live television debates and mass rallies which gave Iranians the impression that they were participating in a real election.

It is this idea that poses the greatest long-term threat to hardliners who hanker for the early days of the Islamic revolution, when politics was to be subordinated to clerical direction.

And while the west has focused on its concerns - Tehran's nuclear ambitions, its expanding influence in the region and Ahmadinejad's views on Israel and the Holocaust - what matters to many Iranians has been the reshaping of Iran's political space to open it up to concepts like pluralism, human rights and the promotion of democracy.

Having allowed the space for vigorous debate, the president and the supreme leader who permitted such political expression will struggle to put it back in its box. Despite the mandate he is now claiming, Ahmadinejad's slick populism and Shia messianic imagery may not be enough to paper over Iran's widening cracks now that people have found their own voices.