It’s a coup d’etat,” says an adviser to the defeated pro-reform Iranian presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, to the telephoned question “So, what happened?” Then, with apologies because the staff is in an emergency session, he hangs up.
What the reformist calls a coup was described today as a great achievement by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who has the final say in all affairs of the country. It was an open secret that the current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was Khamenei’s favorite candidate. If an electoral fraud, tantamount to a coup, had indeed happened, most believe that it was staged with Khamenei’s blessing.