What is happening in Iran now, after the election, should indelibly change external perceptions of the country and its discontents

Whether or not “revolutionary” enforcers at the command of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei bludgeon to a halt the protests against a blatantly falsified election “result”, there is no way that the extraordinary Iranian presidential election campaign of 2009, or its still more extraordinary aftermath, can be made unreal by mere fascists. Thirty years after the Shah’s overthrow, the revolutionary façade has cracked, exposing chasms within the establishment between those who, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insist that Iran is still not Islamic enough and those who, while not questioning the system of rule by divine law, unwittingly put the revolution in question by seeking to move on to something more closely resembling a “normal” state.