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So it's official. Iran's Guardian Council has, after ordering a random recount of some 10% of the votes, endorsed the supreme leader's judgment that there was nothing wrong with the conduct and hastily proclaimed official result of Iran's presidential election. What the supreme leader called a "divine assessment" is now confirmed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the duly elected president of the Islamic Republic. Anyone who dares go on the streets to dispute this result will be duly beaten up, incarcerated, tortured or shot.

Now even if that election had been the most pristine in the whole history of democracy, the scale of subsequent opposition demonstrations and the...