An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult.

Guy might know what he’s talking about.

“They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year,” Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. “They eventually broke my resistance.”

There used to be a clique in power in this country that would read reports like these and take notes.

Well, OK, sure. But what good is that if the regime can withstand legitimacy-based challenges through the use of brute force? I asked Parsi if the opposition’s goal was still to overturn the election, given that its legal recourses are few, and if not, what a new goal might be. “The goal at this stage remains” a fair election result, he replied, since the “wiggle room is still extensive” for overturning the election. Contingencies could emerge, compelling an overturn of the results, such as “a large number of senior ayatollahs com[ing] out to criticize the legitimacy of the electoral results” or if the opposition could “get a majority of 86 people on the Assembly of Experts to come out, that can really threaten Khamenei and his institutions.”

Parsi further explained, in response to Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress, that the critical constituency would be conservative clerics who feel threatened by Ahmadinejad’s consolidation of power. In an irony from the perspective of the American debate about Iran — which conflates reformism with secularism — the clerics see Ahmadinejad “as a dangerous element, quite correctly, who tries to undermine the clergy as a whole.” That might compel some of them to resist Ahmadinejad, or to place pressure on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to find some compromise with the opposition.

But if a compromise can’t be found, then the opposition enters a new phase, having to face a choice between accepting Ahmadinejad and moving to a more radical position. “There are people loyal to the system, who don’t want to bring the system down but at the same time believe the system is quite imperfect [and wish to] ensure the system changes through peaceful means,” Parsi said. If they fail, “then we face a significantly more radical movement in Iran, with more bloodshed than we’ve seen.”

The important criterion for American policy right now has to be to reject Ahmadinejad’s attempts at portraying his victory as final. That means no negotiations, which is “creating some problems with the Obama administration, which is so very dedicated to the process of diplomacy,” Parsi said. While the administration has placed the onus for any diplomacy on Iran, if Iran calls the U.S.’s bluff and talks renew, it will send the message that the international community views the opposition’s efforts as futile.

There’s a lot of stuff in Bolton’s new Washington Post op-ed about how negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program will fail — and, in all honesty, the case for that looks better now than it did before the June 12 election. But that’s all foreplay. Money quote:

Significantly, the uprising in Iran also makes it more likely that an effective public diplomacy campaign could be waged in the country to explain to Iranians that [an Israeli strike] is directed against the regime, not against the Iranian people. This was always true, but it has become even more important to make this case emphatically, when the gulf between the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the citizens of Iran has never been clearer or wider. Military action against Iran’s nuclear program and the ultimate goal of regime change can be worked together consistently.

Yes, the Israeli bombs will only kill the bad Iranians. When patriotic Iranians of the opposition see Israeli F-16s raining death from above on Iranian targets, Bolton actually expects them to think, “Boom shack-a-lacka! Here come our Israeli liberators! Let them bomb whatever they like, since even though Mir Hussein Moussavi supports a nuclear program as part of a consensus opinion, I believe Israeli propaganda that says it has our best interests at heart! That’ll show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! Did you hear that, Aunt Marjam? Aunt Marjam…?”

If there’s one thing that a Bush official should understand, it’s that people under attack from a foreign enemy don’t rush to embrace their more moderate leaders.

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A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said the department assigned its robbery and homicide division to investigate the death, but the spokesman said that was because of Mr. Jackson’s celebrity.

“Don’t read into anything,” the spokesman told reporters gathered outside the Bel-Air house. He said the coroner had taken possession of the body and would conduct an investigation.

I think we can agree that the Iranian regime benefits from the media rush to memorialize, explore and reflect upon Michael Jackson and his legacy. Cui bono and all that … (Here’s where human rights liberalism really does collapse its differences with conspiracy-theory-prone neoconservatism. I’m Spencer and I’ll be your host this morning.)

It’s like this: the local embassy (in my case, in Cairo) sets up a 4th of July celebration. There is American food (hot dogs, sodas, etc) provided for free to all who are invited, which includes any American citizen (you show your passport to get in) and invited guests, which are some business owners that do business with the embassy, and other diplomats from other countries’ embassies. Pretty much all of them. At least where I grew up, there was a certain amount of collegiality among diplomats from various embassies–they shared more with each other than they did with the local population (living away from home, beholden to a government far away, trying to raise kids in a foreign country and often sending their kids to the same schools).

For them to now rescind such invitations, to, basically, a cook-out, would be pretty ridiculous and pointlessly belligerent.

“Pointlessly belligerent” describes the Iranian regime right now, but I can see what she means. There’s no point in acting out of pique — these are diplomats, not bloggers. But still, particularly when the crackdown appears to be intensifying, telling Iranian diplomats they’re not going to break bread with ours while this goes on is a fairly cost-free way of registering opprobrium. It would be sickening to see U.S. diplomats host their Iranian counterparts for a party while the regime they work for is doing something that the world rightly rejects. Rescinding the invites appears to be a non-issue; stopping their proliferation is appropriate. There’ll be time enough for substantive diplomacy after the Iranian crisis comes to a conclusion.

Their ideal regime would create a state-run capitalist class eager to profit in international markets to the detriment of blue-collar workers in Iran and any independent private sector. It would be a rentier state based on political allegiances, brimming with discrimination and corruption and maintained by the machineries of oppression. If left unchecked, Khamenei’s efforts would further consolidate power in the hands of a select few — all but guaranteeing the ultimate triumph of sultanism in Iran.

You can take five minutes away from Sanford, can’t you?

I don’t really want to argue with this so much as I’d like to suggest broadening its focus. While we don’t know what exactly success would mean for the opposition, governing Iran, to some degree, is presumably part of the picture. And there the opposition would have to govern more than just the people who already support it. There are millions of Iranians who voted for Ahmadinejad. They’re not going anywhere. Same goes with the revolutionary generation. One of the biggest mistakes that revolutionaries make is failing to expand their constituent base once in power.  And there all I’d suggest is that it’s probably better not to say anything that could make the United States into an obstruction to the opposition’s attempts, once in power — and, yes, we’re a long way from there — to win over its opponents. There will already be enough internal problems for any successful opposition to contend with, as well as actual substantive disagreements with the United States and other countries, to add to the burden.

That said: Trita Parsi told me last week that the prudent course for anyone seeking solidarity with the Iranian opposition is to stay “two steps behind” the Iranians. It’s good advice. What it should mean, when followed rigorously, is that the American position changes as the Iranian opposition’s positions change. Jocelyn is happier with the administration’s later statements than its earlier ones. I take it from Trita’s op-ed the other day that he thinks it’s time for Obama to start condemning the regime as it continues its violent suppression of the opposition. We’ll hear from the president shortly, but all this should signal that the administration’s rhetoric has some room for maneuver.