ONE of the seven Iranian presidential election candidates caused a stir during the third and final televised debate on Saturday by touching on subjects long seen as taboo.

Former Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati called upon the electorate to vote for him in order to avoid a recurrence of August 1953 — a reference to the Anglo-US coup which reinstalled the Shah’s dictatorship and an attempt to indicate that the Islamists plan to close society further.

And Mr Hemmati also referred to the country’s rigged 2009 election, which gave rise to nine months of massive public protests, a brutal crackdown and an existential crisis that the Islamic Republic still reels from today.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei labelled the protests seditious — and there has been a ban on making public reference to them ever since.

So far, the televised debates had been dull and ineffective, but the final one on Saturday laid bare the power struggle between the regime’s factions.

At stake is the reaching of a settlement with the United States to lift its sanctions and the lucrative resumption of trade.

The appearance of high voter turnout is an important factor for the ruling regime, which faces a deepening crisis of legitimacy, so all its machinery has been geared to try and spark the interest of the public. But the sham elections, set for Friday, have been boycotted by most Iranian political parties and leading figures.

Given this situation, there are legitimate concerns that the regime will simply recourse to the stuffing of ballot boxes and renew its campaign of coercion and intimidation against a disillusioned and tired public.