THE PROTESTERS have been routed from the streets of Tehran, but the political turmoil in Iran continues unabated behind the scenes. The authority of both the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is being overtly challenged by religious and secular elites. Given the internal tumult and uncertainty, it looks increasingly doubtful that the regime will respond meaningfully to the Obama administration’s deadline of late September to discuss curtailing its nuclear program or risk what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called “crippling sanctions.”
In the past weeks, the regime has pressed ahead with its Stalinist mass show trial, a sickening spectacle in which prominent figures who protested the outcome of the disputed June 12 presidential election are undergoing a ritualized humiliation that has further embittered the opposition. Reading what for all the world looks like coerced confessions, some of the defendants, accused of conspiring with Western powers to foment a “soft revolution,” may face execution.
