Source: Newshour

Protests and unrest continue in Iran over the results of the presidential election that gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another four year term. Although Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has tried to quell opposition by calling on the Guardian Council to look into allegations of fraud, Karim Sadjadpour explains on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer (video segment below) that these recent events have a larger meaning for the Islamic Republic:

"I think this is really an unprecedented moment in the 30-year history of the Islamic regime. And the sense of rage and injustice you saw on the streets today in Tehran and throughout the country was really palpable. And what's different about this time around is that, in the past, all of these demonstrations have been the people against the regime. And this time, you see unprecedented fissures amongst the revolutionary elite themselves. Someone like former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, is now in the opposition. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has impeccable revolutionary credentials, who was the prime minister during the 1980s, is now part of the opposition. So we've never seen these types of fissures before amongst the political elite themselves."