Reuters IRAN'S reformist opposition has watched with admiration as revolutions have toppled three Arab leaders, but despite divisions in the ruling elite it looks incapable for now of taking its protest movement back out onto the streets. Mass protests against the 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the worst unrest since the uprising three decades earlier, but were quelled with lethal force by the state's security apparatus, headed by the elite Revolutionary Guards. While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swiftly endorsed the election result, splits emerged in the ruling establishment as some, including lawmakers, criticised the government for mishandling the protests and using force to silence the ‘Green' opposition. Attempts to revive street protests have fizzled. The opposition, which says its fight for a freer Iran will continue, is following the Arab uprisings with a mixture of envy and regret for its own failure, analysts and moderate former officials say. “The opposition is leaderless and lacks any strategy. The opposition leaders are under house arrest. Dozens of prominent reformists are jailed. Their supporters have no choice but to wait and see,” said a close ally of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, who asked not to be named. Mousavi, a former prime minister, and Mehdi Karoubi, a cleric and a former parliament speaker who also stood against Ahmadinejad, have been placed under house arrest since February and denied any contact with the outside world. The authorities, who deny the election was rigged, have jailed many senior pro-reform politicians, closed a dozen reformist publications and banned at least two moderate parties since the vote. The government is permitting less and less political dissent by banning media coverage of the opposition, according to journalists working for local newspapers. The opposition continues to communicate over the Internet despite a web-filtering system designed by the authorities to curb its online activity. The main question is whether the lack of anti-government protests shows the pro-democracy movement is a spent force, or whether it can remain alive despite the fierce state crackdown. “The core supporters of the regime are ready to sacrifice their lives for the regime. They consider killing or dying for the regime as their religious duty,” said a pro-reform politician, who was sentenced to two years jail after the 2009 vote on charges of “acting against national security”. “Confronting the establishment has been made very costly to intimidate the opposition supporters.” Unlike the Arab countries, Iran's opposition leaders are limited in their ambitions: they remain committed to the Islamic Revolution and the principles of its leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but they want to reform the establishment within that framework. __
