I'm amused at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speech today, as it offers up such helpful gems as:
"There is 11 million votes difference," the ayatollah said. "How can one rig 11 million votes?"
Given the apparent fact that the voting certification did not even follow the Republic's normal rules for vote certifications.
"The Islamic establishment will never manipulate people's votes and commit treason ... the legal structures and electoral regulations of this country do not allow vote rigging," he said in his first public address on the issue since the election.
I'm confident that, by the book, elections in Chicago can never be rigged, either.
At the same time as the Ayatollah was telling everyone to shut up and go home, Ahmadinejad was backing off from generally derogatory remarks he'd made about the protesters, insisting that he just meant the ones who were burning buildings. Inasmuch as those are his loyalist Basij militia members (who are also killing off their fellow Iranians), that's fairly risible as well.
When a young Persian expat was interviewed on the BBC today, he complained that reporters are only reporting from Tehran, whereas out in the rest of the country, people like Ahmadinejad. When the BBC interviewer pointed out that this was because most foreign reporters had been ejected and the others couldn't leave Tehran, the expat suggested they could "find a way" and that the coverage of election-related unrest is all about hating on the Islamic Republic.
Of course, what seems most accurate is that what happens next will depend on people within Iran, and we will continue to simply watch and see.