Ahmadinejad makes it official

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in for his second term as president of Iran this week, as security forces battled hundreds of protesters shouting “Death to the dictator.” Moderate lawmakers and all three of Ahmadinejad’s challengers boycotted the ceremony, as reformists continued to press their campaign to have the election results thrown out due to widespread fraud. Ahmadinejad only obliquely addressed the two months of unrest that have gripped Iran since the vote, noting that many Western nations have not congratulated him. “They do not respect the rights of other nations,” he said.

The government began televising the trial of more than 100 prominent reformists, showing some defendants confessing to being part of a vast, Western-financed conspiracy to overthrow the Islamic republic. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said that defendants “showed signs of medieval torture.”

Iran is now “borrowing a page from Stalin’s Russia,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. With clerics and politicians speaking out against the regime’s brutal crackdown, the ruling mullahs have raised the “contemptible spectacle of show trials,” and even have warned that anyone who criticizes the trials will be arrested. The tension “underscores the dilemma the Obama administration faces as it clings to a strategy of engaging Iran to contain its nuclear ambitions: Who is there to talk to?”

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Not Ahmadinejad, said the Los Angeles Times. He has the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the feared Republican Guards—but lacks legitimacy even among many clerics. His “will be a weakened presidency.” Besides, given that the regime has accused the U.S. of illegally supporting the reformists, Ahmadinejad is unlikely to agree to nuclear talks.

There’s no point in the U.S. pushing for talks now anyway, said USA Today. The coming weeks will bring change to Iran one way or another. “If the moderates prevail, new doors may open.” If the regime crushes the reformists, the mullahs “will lose their legitimacy.” For the U.S., “it mostly is a win-win scenario.”