You’ve seen it. There’s really not much to say. The good thing about Khamenei’s Friday prayers speech was that it was crystal clear, leaving no room for interpretations. The bad thing about Khamenei’s speech was that it was crystal clear, leaving no room for hope. We’re not shocked – well maybe a little, and only because of the sharp tone, speeding up developments over the next few days - since we had already worried enough about this gang heading southbound with no exit in sight. There was hope, however, albeit blind. Khamenei finally shut the door on all those knocking with a complaint over the election results, by declaring the system in Iran as fraud-proof. One thing is for sure now: you cannot chat with the man.
If a chance existed for any fraud to be proved or disproved, it is now completely buried in the smell of fish. The proof is no longer the issue, the stakes were just doubled and Khamenei lost a large portion of the population. Today, the Supreme Leader pushed the reset button and sent everyone back to square one. And I mean the one from thirty years ago: arrests, executions, bombings, assassinations, unsafe streets, unsafe homes, roadblocks, suspicions, vigilantism, harassment, clampdowns, same old, same old. It took us thirty years to go full circle. Once more, we’ll club our own people, shout at the West and who knows maybe start a fight with someone too. With the wedge driven between people, we may even see a new phenomenon, something absent in the discourse in Iran up to now: suicide bombings. Be on the lookout for those. The barking and salivating hounds that were on a leash up to now are capable of it, and worse they would be hurting their own too just to raise tensions and rally support.
Tomorrow will be a crucial day, with a demonstration set from Enghelab to Azadi again, both for the opposition leaders and for their supporters. One way to see today’s speech is a scare tactic by the scared. Whether this is enough to break people’s resolve remains to be seen. I highly doubt it, which means many will be hurt or dead by Sunday morning. But most importantly, Khamanei has now forced Mousavi to play his hand. The way I see it, he can resign from the battle, by officially giving in or simply escaping the country, or by charging through and putting his life on the line. He will have to make his decision and announce it tomorrow, before disillusionment settles within his followers.
This election has certainly dashed any hope on the part of its constituency that they can cause change in the system through incremental mutations. The change demanded by many (perhaps most) of them, and avoided by those in power, did arrive after all, only suddenly and harshly. Things can go either way. We might be hurled back into the Stone Age, or manage to overhaul the system right now and avoid that. I believe in this case, however, all roads lead to one place. On the one hand, the sheer numbers the government has to subdue may prove to be a mammoth task and break its back. On the other, should the government manage to hold control over the situation, with the prodigies in position to plan for and manage the country, as well as the in-fighting over power, I think we can sit back and relax and let it fester and eventually implode under its own weight. Who knows what will rise from the ashes. Unleash the dogs now.