ARTICLE: Iran's Opposition Extends Olive Branch, Unrequited, By MICHAEL SLACKMAN, New York Times, January 28, 2010

If this is the route sought by the opposition, then I would say that the Revolutionary Guard's putsch is just about complete and Ahmadinejad, by holding fast, emerges far more powerful than before.

And honestly, my gut instinct has been all along that the Guard's creeping takeover of the system was the next, best iteration we could hope for (having stated that years ago when the first analytical stories appeared in the MSM about Ahmadinejad looking to create a more secular, single-party state based around the RG explicitly with the presidency being highly enhanced relative to the Supreme Leader--the loser in this dynamic but still the "revered" figurehead {remember how Mao took to that tactic in the 1960s?}). Why the best? It ends up being a de facto secularization of the system: the mullahs are progressively marginalized and we end up with a Brezhnevian--as in stall--one-party state that dominates the economy and wallows in sad corruption.

That is actually a state we can handle nicely because it's such a familiar presentation--all these many years since the Revolution!

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)