Mr President, it is time for you to compromise, especially with the senior clerics, in a process overseen by the Supreme Leader. Doing so, you will acknowledge where the final authority lies in the Islamic Republic: with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, backed by his clerical experts, and not with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Doing so, you will acknowledge that your direction and your officials are responsible for post-election abuses which must be punished and redressed.While I neither agree nor disagree with Lucas' analysis - who really knows what the Shark was implying, after all - I have to wonder if such a compromise would be palpable by the Iranian people. Lucas goes on to say that "Rafsanjani did not call and will not call, even in code, for the dismissal of Ahmadinejad, [for] that moment, if it ever existed, passed long ago with the affirmation of the Supreme Leader that the 12 June election result would stand." Be that as it may, I have a hard time imagining the Green movement subsiding without Ahmadinejad's dismissal. And I would not even label that as the end goal, but rather, the bare minimum.
Which is exactly why Khamenei finds himself so cornered at the present: he can no longer cut his support of the coup d'etat, but the very same coup government is now aiming to marginalize him. If the above account is to be believed, then it signals a growing desperation on Khamenei's part.
