Since Buzzkill digs Fareed, I can’t resist a fisk.
Fareed is totally wrong.

The three most powerful forces in the modern world are democracy, religion and nationalism. In 1989 in Eastern Europe, all three were arrayed against the ruling regimes. Citizens hated their governments because they deprived people of liberty and political participation. Believers despised communists because they were atheistic, banning religion in countries where faith was deeply cherished. And people rejected their regimes because they saw them as imposed from the outside by a much-disliked imperial power, the Soviet Union.

Say what? The situ in Iran is nothing like that. Iran is all about two competing versions of al-Islam in an islamic state. Nejad’s fundamentalists are very similiar to American conservatives…socially conservative, ostentatiously pious, poorer, older, more rural, lowtech….and….outnumbered, or soon to be. Like ‘merican conservatives the demographic timer is running out on their control algorithms– 3 out of 5 Iranians are under 30. Mousavi’s greens are socially liberal, more educated(65% of uni students are female), younger, more urban, and high tech. A nation of bloggers..mostly computer literate. Like American liberals. ;)
Green Wave is not a revolution….it is a reform movement, a civil rights movement.
Why election fraud

With respect to how planned the vote fraud was, in a way I think it goes back to 2005, and the runoff between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. There was piecemeal fraud back then too, no doubt sanctified by figures like Mesbah-Yazdi, but because it was Rafsanjani who was the victim – a mere “least worst” option for many voters – there was no national upheaval, merely anger from Rafsanjani and his cronies that was later appeased by increased power for them elsewhere in the system. The parameters of this election were set by the same factional battle, only instead of directly facing Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad faced a coalition: Rezaie to pare away the military vote, Karroubi the clerical vote, and Mousavi as the man he would face in the second-round runoff.
So Ahmadinejad’s supporters again carried out the fraud, this time on a massive scale meant to decisively preempt a runoff; but they didn’t anticipate that Mousavi would draw Khatami-like support. Thus 2009 is a combination of 2005 and 1997, and the system’s managers, usually so politically adroit, stumbled into a crisis.