I do find this action by Khamenei surprising. Moussavi may be a comparative “moderate” or “reformer”, but he's been neck-deep in the regime since its beginning. He helped set up the nuclear-weapons program; he was complicit in wholesale imprisonment and executions by the regime in the 1980s, and in Iran's sponsorship of Hezbollah terrorism.

It was suggested that the defeat of Ahmedinejad by Moussavi would be bad. It would allow the fools in the West to continue to believe that Iranian democracy is more than a sham: see, the bad guy was thrown out. It would replace the figure whom most Westerners see as embodying the faults of the Iranian regime with someone who is practically the same but not known as such.

Why then should Ahmedinejad be allowed to steal the election? ISTM certain that this could not have happened without the approval of Khamenei and the Council of Guardians.

Perhaps an even deeper game is being played – there will be a “revolution”, Ahmedinejad will be overthrown, Khamenei will be discredited and resign, and the “reformer” Moussavi will take power, to the applause of the West. And no one will notice that Moussavi is just as committed to building nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism.

http://www.easypersian.com/W34/persian_samples_...