In an interesting article by Christopher Hitchens Did the Toppling of Saddam Hussein Lead to Recent Events in Iran? he notes that the internal fractures caused by elections protests appear to be significant…
The first is that public discontent with the outrages of the last few weeks must be extremely deep and extremely widespread. Differences among the clerisy are usually solved in much more discreet ways. If the Shiite scholars of Qum are willing to go public and call the Ahmadinejad regime an impostor, they must be impressed with the intensity of feeling at the grass roots. The second induction follows from the first: It is not an exaggeration to say that the Islamic republic in its present form is now undergoing a serious crisis of legitimacy.
