When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, after serving as the mayor of Tehran, a high-level Iranian official close to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that he had erred in selecting Ahmadinejad, and that after three years' time, he would change his mind and abandon him. However, the official's guess was mistaken; the Supreme Leader remained committed to Ahmadinejad's candidacy for re-election and imposed him by force, against reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has become a symbol of the popular resistance to the regime. The events on the streets of Iranian cities in the past few days have shown that there is strong popular resistance to the regime and that the regime is determined to suppress and halt this movement by force, with the help of the Basij militia, which has been responsible for protecting the regime since it was established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. All of the scenes and developments in the streets of Iranian cities, since the commemoration of Ashoura, confirm that there is deep popular resentment everywhere, and that it is not limited to the opposition, which is being led by Mousavi. The regime has resorted to killing Mousavi's nephew, based on its policy of repression, making a show of force, and preventing demonstrations from taking place. However, Iranians inside the country who have been quoted by the media have indicated that the resistance and opposition have spread to the entire country, and that no one is leading it, not even Mousavi. The popular resentment is facing severe repression, which might end the demonstrations, because the Iranian people will not commit collective suicide, as Ahmad Salamatian, a pro-opposition Iranian refugee in France, put it. However, this does not mean that the regime's hard-line, repressive stance against the opposition will be able to prevent any wide-scale popular protest or demonstration forever. Thirty years ago, the Iranian people brought in the current regime as the army of the Shah, who claimed that he had the fourth most powerful military force in the world, fell before this popular resentment, without repression being able to end the unrest. These days, conditions are different, since the head of state is present, in the form of a Supreme Leader who rejects any rapprochement with the United States and the west, irrespective of the openness that US President Barack Obama has shown toward him. Obama's policy of extending an open hand at the beginning of his term was a failed attempt, since everyone who knows Supreme Leader Ali Khameini well is aware of his opposition to any opening to the US. Meanwhile, the young people and university students of Iran are giving priority to their aspirations over everything coming from the US, from music and fashion to IT. There is also deep resentment about the country's poor economic conditions, as a result of American and UN sanctions. Unemployment is high and cost-of-living conditions have become intolerable. This big oil state cannot benefit from its natural resources because of its foreign policies, and like the regime of Iraq's former president, Saddam Hussein, it has resorted to repression and hard-line stances as solutions. This prompts us to ask, how long can the Iranian state muffle the anger that has spread among Iranians? Repression alone, these days, cannot remove this anger in the age of the internet and satellite networks, since the globalization of communications and the media is stronger than repression; the Iranian regime that was produced by Khomeini's revolution took place prior to this globalized era. The demonstrations in Iran also raise several questions about the country's political future. No one knows what this future will hold, and no one truly knows what will happen inside the regime. It is clear that the sons of the revolution itself, from Mousavi to former Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, have become opponents of the regime that brought them to office. We cannot predict what the events of today will produce in the way of future developments. The only thing that is clear is that the regime will become more hard-line and extreme. It will cling to a fixed policy of claiming that the demonstrations are a foreign conspiracy against Iran. This is what Iran's allies in the region are saying, during their meetings with western officials.
