Meanwhile in Iran

The legitimacy of fundamental institutions, including elections and the office of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being questioned by a wider swath of the body politic than ever before in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history.

[...]

Iran’s leverage is eroding, as is apparent in what the hardliners themselves are now asking Iranians to do: Forget about the principled argument, crafted carefully over many years, that Iran has a “sovereign right” to nuclear technology, and become consumed instead with fear of Western conspiracy and a fifth column aiming at a “soft” revolution. While the former argument was designed to bring the “Iranian people,” inside the country and in the diaspora, under a big tent of nationalism, presenting the nuclear program as part of Iran’s historical aspiration to take its rightful place in the world order, the latter zips the tent flap shut, depicting confrontation with the “enemy,” including alleged traitors inside the establishment, as the only way for Iran to maintain its sovereignty.

  Merip

Meanwhile, inside Iran, eminent cleric and thorn in the side of the Khomeini government, Husayn Ali Montazeri, on Monday branded Iran a "military-controlled" regime and called on the leading clerics to condemn repression. He argued that if all the major clerics (called maraji` or exemplars, i.e. people to be imitated in their views on the religious law) took on the regime, it would be forced to change.

Three of Montazeri's grandsons are said to have been taken into custody, in response.

  Juan Cole

And we would liberate them if we had any troops left. And we weren’t afraid Iran really can produce nukes. Or that Russia would step in.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.