Con Coughlin writes:

the assertion of a thumping victory has provoked the restless and disenfranchised voters who desperately sought change in the figure of Mousavi, who served as the country’s prime minister under Khomeini from 1981 to 1989. Although he has proved himself a dedicated servant of the Islamic republic, Mousavi is one of a number of prominent Iranians who feel they have been sidelined. Others include former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his successor, the moderate Khatami. These men have undoubtedly given the current protests a sense of purpose and direction. But they also point to the fact that, even if it is successful, Iran’s green revolution is unlikely to mean anything more radical than a change in personnel, and certainly not the comprehensive regime change so many crave. For the past 30 years, Mousavi and his supporters have demonstrated their unswerving dedication to the cause of revolutionary Islam. Under his premiership in the late 1980s, Iran came close to all-out war with the US and its allies during the death throes of the Iran-Iraq war. The greatest advances in the country’s nuclear program, including the regime’s attempts to build an atom bomb, were undertaken during the presidencies of Rafsanjani and Khatami. Their primary aim in opposing Ahmadinejad’s election victory, therefore, is to reclaim some of the power and influence they once enjoyed, rather than to effect a radical change in the way Iran is run. It is for this reason that the democratic hopes of all those brave Iranians who have taken to the streets will ultimately be in vain. Even if Khatami were to sacrifice Ahmadinejad in the interests of preserving the regime, the President would simply be replaced by another Iranian leader whose first priority would be to protect the ideological foundations of Khomeini’s Islamic revolution.