Iran, elections and visibility

It's no great surprise that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the actual leader of Iran, came back to say that the recent election was legitimate, even after he and the others of the ruling council scrutinized it. If they had said otherwise they would have been saying that they had been complicit in any wrong doings, since they control so much of the electoral process. He ordered the people of Iran not to protest, and said it couldn't have been rigged because of the huge difference in votes. Apparently he thinks it's possible to rig a small number of votes, but not a large one.

The central issue to this whole situation is not who got elected. Even if your candidate doesn't win, life usually goes on. It comes down to visibility, reliability, believability. The people of Iran don't have confidence in the honesty of their government. They don't trust them. There are no checks and balances, just orders to obey.

The people of Iran are smart and resourceful. Even without the benefit of knowing anything else about them, about their thousands of years of history, the infrastructure they've built in their country, or the passion and intellectual curiosity of it's people, it's clear that they're willing to risk being beaten horribly or worse to have a voice and to know that that voice is really heard, not just manipulated.

Iran is on the verge of revolution, and it has nothing to do with Jewish people (despite Khamenei's accusation), or America or any outside influence. If your people are revolutionary, militarily or otherwise (and Iranians are both militarily and otherwise) you should expect them to cause revolutions. Not including them, treating them like children, trying to force them to accept things and telling them they asked for it, is a really bad move.