So Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is standing by the highly improbable fiction that the election was a fair one. It seems to me that he and his supporters are playing a dangerous game. Sure, Khamenei has the instruments of oppression at his disposal. He can use the state and vigilante citizens to crack down on the protesters, and he might even win the day. In the end, however, he has made all too clear that the democratic elements of the system are no more than window dressing. Instead of sacrificing his preferred candidate, he is now risking the entire system. How can it now escape the opposition that the president is not the problem, but the entire system itself?