Iran blossoms in this campaign season

In big cities such as Esfahan and Tehran, caravans of motorcyclists stream down roadways nightly, sometimes with two people riding pillion. With one hand clutching each other for dear life, they hold up the green balloons and banners of the Mousavi campaign or the red, white and green Iranian flag, which has become the symbol of the Ahmadinejad campaign, as they roar past.

In the countryside, campaign posters plaster walls in sleepy, ancient mud-brick enclaves far from the main highways, where women in all-covering black chadors sweep past stark golden desert landscapes.

Shopkeepers, farmers and retirees hold impromptu debates, disagreeing amicably with one another, over the country's problems and talking about its leaders -- in years past almost all would have been turbaned clerics above reproach -- as if they were athletes battling it out on the sports field.

It's been a thrilling ride, with impromptu rallies sprouting in town and city squares alike. But beneath the good-spirited fun, there is an undercurrent of danger, highlighted by the walkie-talkie-toting plainclothes security officials hovering around the crowds and the nasty bare-knuckled chants that the rival groups hurl at each other.

In addition to revealing the repressed swell of youthful energy, the election season has laid bare Iran's many divisions: between rural and urban; religious and secular; working-class and educated; old and young; those for whom the outside world remains a threat to their way of life and those who look outside Iran for ideas and opportunities.

Iran tends to loosen up during quadrennial presidential and parliamentary elections. The debates get a little more heated and street life a little less staid. But you never had anything like this year, when many of the country's top power brokers, in a bid to defeat Ahmadinejad, used the levers of government to open up the campaign by allowing late-night campaigning and television debates.

You never had people spray-painting "Freedom!" on their vans and marching in spur-of-the-moment parades.

You never had the candidates on live television discussing state secrets, such as the president's unsuccessful alleged attempt to give millions of dollars to foreign governments, that once were only whispered about.

You never had candidates openly accusing each other of corruption, cronyism and lying.

And you never had an incumbent president holding up the apparent intelligence dossier of the wife of his chief opponent, live on television.