By now it will probably bore you to hear that there is no such thing as a boring presidential election in Iran. But I submit that this is true,” Laura Secor writes in her stirring 2016 book, Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran. Given the ease, in hindsight, with which Hassan Rouhani won re-election on Saturday as President, it may appear that we finally have an exception to her assertion. Rouhani took 57% of the vote, to his nearest opponent, Ebrahim Raisi's 38.5%, thus averting the need for a run-off. This was so obviously Rouhani's election to lose, that it would have needed a spectacular mistake on his campaign's part, or an intervention of the sort effected in 2009 to deny Mir Hossein Mousavi the presidency, for him to be denied continuance in office. Rouhani is too experienced a hand, and the Supreme Leader a lot more cautious about provoking protests than Iran's 'deep state” was eight years ago, so everything went as per expectation - without the edginess usually associated with Iranian elections, such as when the reformist Mohammad Khatami won the vote in 1997 and 2001, or when the populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated the grand old man of Iranian politics, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in 2005 or when he in fact went on to reportedly steal the vote in 2009. Yet, for all its predictability and lack of drama, the 2017 election could be far more crucial than those in the past. For one, speculation is growing about who may succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader, the most powerful position in the Islamic Republic. In the time since he took over from Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, Khamenei has presided over a deepening web of security, political and electoral arrangements, so that it is difficult for even the most avid among Iran watchers to precisely locate where exactly power and decision-making rest. It is unclear how much of a role Khamenei may himself play in the near future to identify, if not groom, a successor. It's interesting that Raisi has often been mentioned as a possible contender; and so has been Rouhani.