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 arbitrary violence of the repression – symbolised by the death of Neda Soltan – would still have transformed the political situation in Iran irreversibly. What happens next will not depend on any slowly emerging details about the vote. Dates to watch include next week's 9 July anniversary of the 1999 student protests and the end of the 40-day mourning period for a young woman the world now knows simply as Neda. Clerical manoeuvrings in darkest Qom, the exceptional solidarity of the whole EU with perennial whipping-boy Britain, US policy, the health of the supreme leader, the price of oil – all will have more influence than historical psephology.
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