I haven’t done much research, but my instinct is that the election may well be valid and it doesn’t make that big of a difference anyway.

That was exactly my initial reaction, and I still think that the election may have been valid enough.

However, my impression is that the protests have become about something more than just replacing one chief administrator with another one also friendly to the theocracy. About moving Iran into a post-revolutionary state, more stable and open but, yes, still a repressive theocracy.

Reza Aslan, on the Daily Show last night, said that Iran is on a brink and could either become a North Korea (more reactionary, more militaristic, and much more closed and isolated from the world) or a China (with the oligarchy still in place, but less of a closed society and more open). As you seem to be, Jon Stewart was unhappy with those two options and wanted “to get a Belgium up in this bitch.”