WHICH IS WHY WE SHOULD ENCOURAGE TURNOUT:

Rivalries within the hardline conservative camp of presidential candidates in Iran may enable a relative moderate to squeeze through to the second round of elections, an Israeli expert on Iran told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. But Iran's supreme leader will not allow a relative moderate to actually win the presidency, another asserted.

None of the hardliners seems inclined to step down. But Hassan Rouhani, a former chief of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and nuclear negotiator, considered the most moderate of Iran's realistic presidential front-runners, may convince another reformist candidate, Mohammed-Reza Aref, to step down. Rouhani could then garner the votes of Iranian reformists upset with the disqualification of veteran politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from the race, said Raz Zimmt, a research fellow at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Follow @brothersjudd