THERE IT IS! UPDATED

UPDATE TOWARDS END OF POST

Pastorius called this very scenario at the Bottom of This Post. We were on it when it was a non-story.

SO MUCH FOR THE NON-STORY

Fox News:

Iranian Pro-Reform Marchers Flood Tehran Streets

Tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran Monday, defying a country-wide crackdown with protests against the hotly-disputed results of last week's presidential election.

Chanting crowds, some wearing green campaign colors, greeted Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate in Friday's election, as he slowly moved through the streets on the back of a car.

Scuffles broke out as Ahmadinejad supporters, riding motorbikes and armed with sticks, attacked the demonstrators along the route.

The vote of the people is more important than Mousavi or any other person!" said Mousavi, standing on the car roof in Revolution Square and speaking through a loudspeaker.

The crowds of young and old who packed several miles of his route, shouted back: "Mousavi, we support you! We will die but retrieve our votes!"

They took up protest chants: "Where are the 63 percent who voted for Ahmadinejad? If Ahmadinejad remains president, we will protest every day."

"This is not election. This is selection," read one English-language placard at the demonstration. Other marchers held signs proclaiming "We want our vote!" and raising their fingers in a V-for-victory salute.

"We want our president, not the one who was forced on us," said 28-year-old Sara, who gave only her first name because of fears of reprisals from authorities.

Both Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, another defeated candidate who appeared alongside him Monday, have lodged complaints that the vote was rigged.

Some of the results — which awarded a record-breaking 25 million votes and 63 percent of the electorate to Ahmadinejad — were announced before the ballot boxes had even been opened.

On Monday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, ordered an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country's most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest Ahmadinejad's re-election.

The decision came after Mousavi wrote a letter appealing to the Guardian Council and met Sunday with Khamenei, who holds almost limitless power over Iranian affairs. Such an election probe by the 12-member council is uncharted territory and it not immediately clear how it would proceed or how long it would take.

Election results must be authorized by the council, composed of clerics closely allied with the unelected supreme leader. All three of Ahmadinejad's challengers in the election — Mousavi and two others — have made public allegations of fraud after results showed the president winning by a 2-to-1 margin.

"Issues must be pursued through a legal channel," state TV quoted Khamenei as saying. The supreme leader said he has "insisted that the Guardian Council carefully probe this letter."

Pastorius UPDATE:

When this story became a story, and other bloggers branded it a "non-story", I wrote the following:

... don't be surprised if there is some kind of M. Night Shyamalam double-switch ending, wherein the Iranian Muhllocracy realizes the error of their ways and awards Mousavi the Presidency, because "the people have spoken".

This would be a Public Relations Coup for the Mullah Regime, who after all, pick all the Presidential Candidates in the first place.

Remember, the LA Times was, just a couple of days back, believed that Freedom was blooming in strange, magical ways.

Somehow, I don't buy the whole arrest scenario.

Why would the Mullahs arrest the guy they installed as a Presidential Candidate in the first place? Did he do something they did not expect him to do? If so, could they not have taken him out before the election?

Fishy!

Looks like I may have been right:

At ABC News:

A spokesman for Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi says his camp will keep pushing to change the results of Friday's election that gave incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad a landslide win.

"We are going to stay in the streets and ask the mullahs to give fatwas that Ahmedinejad is not our president. We are going to ask the Leader, through the will of the people, to change his mind," said Mostafa Makhmalbaf, who is speaking to the foreign press on Mousavi's behalf from his home in Paris.

"I don't think we can do a total Revolution in Iran but we can make some change," he told ABC News, describing what would be an unprecedented reversal for the Islamic Republic.

Mousavi's campaign claims the announced outcome, which gave Ahmedinejad 63 percent of the vote, was fraudulent....

Yes, I think this is all a ruse to give the illusion that the people's will will be done.

I highly doubt the Mullahs would allow Mousavi's people to stand,in the street demanding the Mullahs deliver Fatwas against Ahmadinejad, unless this was according to the Mullahs plans in the first place.