The only surprising thing about this New York Times report on the Iranian sham “election” is that there are apparently people who believe it wasn’t rigged: Iran Moderate Says Hard-Liners Rigged Election.

TEHRAN, June 18 - The race for the presidency in Iran was thrown into turmoil on Saturday when the third-place finisher accused conservative hard-liners of rigging the election and cutting him out of the runoff vote next week, which will be between a former president and the conservative mayor of Tehran.

The accusation of voting irregularities came from Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and former speaker of Parliament known as a conciliator, who said he would continue to press his case publicly unless the country’s supreme religious leader ordered an independent investigation.

It was a bold move in a country that does not generally tolerate such forms of public dissent, and it threw an element of confusion and uncertainty into the race just as the authorities were finalizing the election results, planning for the runoff and pointing to the outcome as a validation of this country’s religion-based system of government.

The man the New York Times describes as “moderate,” Mehdi Karroubi, also happens to be former Secretary General and founding member of something called the Militant Clerics Society.