High turnout for Iranian elections

Iranian voters went to the polls today to elect their next president in what has been one of the most hotly contested elections in Iran's recent history.

Conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is standing for re-election, but he's in a close race with Mir Hossein Mousavi, a reformist who was prime minister in the 1980s.

Polling stations were ordered to remain open for an additional three hours in order to attend long lines of voters. The massive turnout comes on the heels of fevered final campaigning which drew huge crowds into the streets.

Niki Akhavan, an Iranian American visiting professor at Washington DC's Catholic University told FSRN that she's never before seen this level of excitement over an Iranian election: