A certain degree of fraud is to be expected in Iranian elections. In 2005, some electoral chicanery made sure that Ahmadinejad emerged from the field of right-wing candidates to challenge the more moderate Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. We still can’t be sure who would have won the elections one week ago, but the official results had Ahmadinejad beating his rival Moussavi by about two to one, almost laughably out of step with every poll done in the run-up to the vote.

We can’t know what Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah expected to happen, but it certainly wasn’t this – protests blanketing the country, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) marching in Tehran. Moussavi’s opposition has been joined by former presidents Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, along with several important members of the clerical establishment. They’ve been saavy in keeping the protests largely non-violent, and in portraying themselves as the true inheritors of 1979’s Islamic revolution. Marchers chant “Allahu akbar” as a rebuke to their government. Their goal is the removal of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, nothing less than the overthrow of the current government.

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have been slow to respond. A few days ago they banned foreign media coverage of the protests, and today the Ayatollah made an ominous and threatening speech at Friday prayers. All this seems preparation for a confrontation, as the demonstrations gain momentum.

• Dark Water psp

As far as I can tell, the best place to go for info is Andrew Sullivan, who’s been posting dozens of updates a day every day for the last week. This is, as he has said, “the central event in modern history right now.” This is the same Iran that many want to bomb or invade for their nuclear program. If America had done that – bombed and invaded a country primed for a mass democratic movement – Ahmadinejad wouldn’t have needed to rig the votes.

-Greg Waldmann