The genie, as they say, is out of the bottle. The hard-line leadership of Iran is trying to do two opposite things at the same time–promote a partially open society and try to control it. Having given the people of Iran, who increasingly chafe under the limits of a rigid authoritarian society, at least the illusion that they had the option of choosing reform, the conservative clerics who have run Iran since its revolution are unhappy with the results. Now they are trying to have it both ways after the fact. Having delivered a sham outcome, they are trying to calm the unrest by simultaneously ratifying the bogus election of Ahmadinejad and investigating a small enough fraction of the polling to ensure the outcome,  giving the impression at least that they are looking into irregularities. The opposition is having none of it. In the classic response of all authoritarian regimes, the next step is the bloody repression now taking place. The question is whether the regime will be able to stifle the protests completely, as China did twenty years ago at Tiananman Square, or whether the Iranian society is now open enough that the hunger for change has taken hold permanently.