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On the road, as usual, Khamenei excoriated Iran's enemies – the United States, Israel, and all the West – and praised the martyrs of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and the war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Khamenei also seemed to be giving a get-out-the vote pep talk to Iranians in anticipation of parliamentary elections next March, and a presidential vote due in 2013.

"It's the people themselves who decide. They go to the polls, they make their choice; things are run by the people," Khamenei told a large crowd last Wednesday, as he ticked off reasons why Iran's Islamic system was superior and indestructible, according to a simultaneous English translation by state-run PressTV.

All problems, Khamenei said then, were solved because of this "participation, the faith of the people in the Islamic establishment, [their] steadfastness and their loyalty, [so that they] consider themselves the owners and governors of the country."

But by Sunday, those sacred principles appeared to be giving way to a less democratic future.