Meanwhile, Back On Planet Earth

Some very significant news from Iran: Rafsanjani may have made headway in Qom. A major statement by a leading clerical group has all but declared the regime created by the coup illegitimate:

The editorial was written by Hossein Shariatmadari, who was picked by the supreme leader to run the newspaper. The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests. It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.

“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said. Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”

This is not over. It is just beginning.