The Grand Poohbah has spoken

Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran gave a speech during the Friday prayers. His speech was held at Tehran University, one of the places where Basij raided the student dormitories, bashing and murdering several of them, and doing a lot of damage. There are pictures and Youtube videos that show the extent of the damage done to the university available through various Internet sites.

Perhaps it is best to hear directly from one who is on the ground in Iran via Andrew Sullivan (who is doing a great job reporting the tweeted messages). The messages show quite a bit of fear, yet a lot of determination to keep on protesting. So, it would seem that the Grand Poohbah has spoken, but he has lost so much credibility that people are prepared to ignore him, even if it means more bloodshed on the streets.

A few analysts have observed the threats contained within that speech, but none have quite managed to express my own thoughts on what it means, with the exception of Andrew Sullivan who states:

I think we find one clue to why he rigged the vote count so crudely. His argument that a majority of eleven million was too big to allow for any irregularities suggests he believed that a big lie was the only one that would work. But if you utter a big lie, you had better hope it could persuade some. It appears to have persuaded no one but a few fools at the Washington Post and the executive editor of the New York Times.

I tend to agree with Sullivan's take on this subject. That statement about the extra 11 million meaning that there was no fraud is ridiculous. What the Grand Poohbah is claiming here is that all of those extra people, who boycotted the polls in 1985 actually voted for Ahmanutjob. I think that Sullivan has summed it up the right way. The Grand Poohbah thinks that he can get away with the lie, and that people will believe him because he is supposed to be a religious moral figure who people are supposed to unquestioningly obey. I think that his speech is a miscalculation with regards to the expectations of the people.

What is more disturbing than this speech is the large number of arrests that are taking place, including arrests of members of the Revolutionary Guard - which is split over any loyalty to their own people, and these despots. It is just as disturbing as the news that the person who leaked the real poll figures, showing that Mousavi had 19 million votes has been eliminated.

What will happen next? We have to wait and see. Clearly not all of the mullahs are on the side of Khamenei and Nutjob. If they rise up against Khamenei then there is a good chance that he will be overthrown, and Rafsanjani does have the power to overthrow Khamenei. I think that this is one reason that Khamenei is running scared, and why he seems to think that a heavy handed approach is the best way for him to retain power.

What we have seen so far, is that in reality it was Mousavi who won the election. The mere fact that the protest that we have seen over the past week keeps getting bigger and stronger is evidence that people are fed up, and they do want a permanent change. Mousavi is more like the catalyst of that mood rather than anything else. We have no real idea whether he would be able to carry out widespread reform. If Khamenei remained in power then reform would be impossible, but with a change to a Supreme Leader who is more moderate then change would be possible. However, it will not be change as western people think of change, it will be something different.

I do not believe that the people will back down over this issue. I see it continuing because this is on the same scale as the 1979 revolution.