Political Earthquake in Iran

There's an excellent piece in the NY Times by Roger Cohen today. I don't know how the NY Times can have a journalist in Iran who's managing to get articles written and published, but they do, and I'm glad. He's about the only one who's been able to get regular quality reporting out for publication. Here are some quotes:

"In fact I believe the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails and screaming their lungs out after dusk."

"On Sunday, I saw Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the establishment’s embittered éminence grise, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He told me his father, who despises President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is fighting a furious rearguard action to have the election annulled by the Guardian Council, the 12-member oversight body that will pronounce this week on the election’s legality."

"Former Revolutionary Guard leader, Mohsen Rezai...who officially won 680,000 votes, says more than 900,000 voters have written to him with their ID numbers saying they cast their ballot for him."

"Khamenei said, 'The dispute is not between the revolution and the counterrevolution,' and that all four electoral candidates 'belong to the system.' He was right, if his words had been spoken the day after the vote. Ten days on, however, the brutal use of force and his own polarizing speech have drawn many more Iranians toward an absolutist stance." (emphasis added)

"Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another." (emphasis added)

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