Khamenei has been trying to to assert his personal supremacy on religious matters, as well as the government, and the heavy hitters are getting personally annoyed at this presumption. Even some who would be considered hard right don’t like his attitude.

They have lost their credibility and respect. You can’t get that back.

The hardliners don’t seem to understand that this is not going away. The protesters are really serious about their rights, and the hardliners just totally screwed up the theft of the election. It’s hard to understand that they weren’t clever enough to steal the election in a believable manner. This is the problem with autocrats, they don’t have any real respect for people, and expect them to do as they are told.

If they were more intelligent this would never have been a problem. People might have suspected that something was wrong, but it wouldn’t have been obvious. When you have more votes in a district than there are voters, that’s pretty obvious. I don’t think there is anyone who reads this blog who couldn’t have done a better job of rigging the votes for a win than the arrogant people who concocted the Iranian election results.

I don’t like the Iranian system of government, but I would just as soon that it not come apart in a spectacular fashion at this point in history. The world is ill-prepared for any more turmoil at the moment. Evolution gets fewer people killed than revolution.