Panamah, you seem to be really interested in middle eastern history. Are you taking courses in it in college or anything?

Although the 1979 revolution was *just* before my time, my brother was a child living in Iran at the time. Both he and my parents can remember all the people marching through the streets, the gunshots going off, the assassinations, etc... My father was a school teacher there at the time, and he remembers the libraries and schools being ransacked, having all the "bad" books being taken out and thrown away, etc.

Anyway, what you may be interested to know, is that most of these "moderate" (if you can call them that) clerics, who are threatening to basically go on strike because other "moderate" clerics aren't being allowed to run, are the exact same clerics who were leading people through the streets, holding American's hostage, and carrying out executions in 1979.

Maybe you could say they had a change of heart over the last 25 years, but their conviction isn't exactly something that I'd put a whole lot of energy in standing behind. I guess the point is, not everything is quite as black and white as it might seem, and in this case, it's not exactly the "bad guys" keeping the "good guys" from running.