Khamenei Draws the Line in Iran

It's Breaking News all over the MSM, here's FOX's take:


Iran Supreme Leader Says Vote Was 'Definitive Victory' as Crowd Chants 'Death to America'


TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's supreme leader said Friday that there was "definitive victory" and no rigging in disputed presidential elections, offering no concession to protesters demanding the vote be canceled and held again.

In his first public address since demonstrators flooded the streets, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said protests should cease and the opposition must pursue its complaints within the confines of the cleric-led ruling system.

He blamed Great Britain and Iran's external enemies for trying to foment unrest but said Iran would not see a second revolution like those that transformed the countries of the former Soviet Union.

"The enemies (of Iran) are targeting the Islamic establishment's legitimacy by questioning the election and its authenticity before and after (the vote)," Khamenei said.

Press TV, an English-language version of Iranian state television, broadcast images from the crowded hall where Khamenei was speaking as the crowd and thousands of people assembled outside cheered.

At several points during Khamenei's speech, the crowd broke out into loud, seemingly-orchestrated chanting. Cameras panned across the sea of supporters as they shouted "death to America" and "death to the UK."

Khamenei said protesters would be "held responsible for chaos if they didn't end" days of massive demonstrations. The unrest has posed the greatest challenge to the system since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought it to power.

Khamenei said official results showing a landslide for hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were beyond question.

"There is 11 million votes difference, Khamenei said. "How one can rig 11 million votes?"
He remained staunch in his defense of Ahmadinejad, saying his views were closer to the president's than to those of Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful patron of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Khamenei told the defeated candidates: "I am urging them to end street protests, otherwise they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos."


There's lots more everywhere. This may be the start of a very long day.

Irony

Consider this series of quotations from two Iranian ayatollahs (hat tip to FJ's Blog):

Excellent Analysis Regarding Iran

Via Winston, a pro-Western infidel and Iranian patriot, at The Spirit of the Man:

It’s hard to know what to think about what’s happening in Iran. On the one hand, straws have been in the wind for weeks now indicating that Supreme Leader Khamenei had chosen Ahmadinejad as victor in the Iranian elections. Khamenei is the only decision-maker that truly matters inside the Iranian firmament, so the outcome was clear.

On the other hand, the scale of the fraud has surprised some who believe that Iran is a) a democracy or b) prefers to maintain a veneer of limited democracy. As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not sure why some are surprised. Sure, it’s clumsy to steal elections from candidates in their hometowns, but then again, Al Gore lost Tennessee. Could have happened?

The real question is, how does this matter? There are two necessary answers. The first is how it matters inside Iran, and that answer is hard to come by. Clearly, as of Monday the pressure was building in a way that forced the Supreme Leader into action. He ordered the Guardian Council to probe allegations of vote fraud—quite a reversal from the weekend, when he pronounced the election a “divine assessment.”

Foreign reporters, amplifying elite opinions inside Tehran as always, seem to believe that there are revolutionary rumblings.

Following #Iranelection on Twitter taps you into a repetitive stream of self reinforcing information/gossip/news that is almost impossible to distill. Photographs of demonstrations make clear that there are efforts to put down popular protests. But is the outrage widespread enough to rock the foundations of the regime? Enough to topple the system? Or is it merely enough to cast a cloud over Ahmadinejad and his backers among the mullahs? And if so, weren’t plenty of clouds there already?

My colleague Ali Alfoneh says that Khamenei’s paranoia and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’s desire to exert more control mean things are going according to plan. That’s another way to look at the election results, and it puts the crudeness of its handling in a different perspective that makes sense.

Perhaps what’s happening isn’t a loss of control, but the groundwork to assert much more control?

The second big question is how this matters to the United States. Successive presidents have made clear (rhetoric notwithstanding, George Bush) that they don’t care much for the well-being of the Iranian people. The U.S. government’s priorities are, in descending order, the Iranian nuclear weapons program, support for terrorism, and a few footnotes about regional interference and generic bad behavior.

If the White House’s impressive silence is any indication, President Obama hasn’t yet figured out what to make of developments. Ahmadinejad’s death-grip on power probably makes a hash of Obama’s desire for détente, but that will only matter if the president chooses to admit that Iran has no intention of engaging in a dialogue aimed at ending its nuclear program (as opposed to a dialogue that is an end in and of itself). And since that has been obvious for some time, it seems unlikely Obama will make any such admission.

Instead, we will persist in efforts to lure the Iranian government to talks. Indeed, you can almost hear the conversation inside the National Security Council: “Doesn’t the unrest in Iran mean Ahmadinejad needs a rapprochement with the United States? Won’t this really help us?” Just wait for it.

Here’s my bet: There’s a revolution happening in Iran, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is behind it, in control, and will be the winner. Keep watching this space and look for developments on IranTracker.org. (AEI-Danielle Pletka)