Ahmadinejad Staging a Coup?

While anti-Ahmadinejad protesters flooded the streets of Iran following the radically right-wing president's reelection Saturday, former Iranian Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi gave a deep-cutting interview to The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss. Yazdi said Moussavi isn't the only one who thinks the election was rigged: "We don't have any doubt. And as far as we are concerned, it is not legitimate." Yazdi pointed to count "irregularities" and controversial polling methods. Dreyfuss inquired whether Ahmadinejad could be building up to "a coup d'etat against the state," to which Yazdi responded, "A coup d'etat? They've already made one! They've created a dictatorship, in fact." Yazdi said Ahmadinejad used security forces to control election night newspapers and businesses. As for the question on everyone's minds—"Where does the Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stand in regard to this?"—Yazdi said he couldn't be sure, but that political forces "monitor and control the flow of information to him," leaving the man most consider the real teeth behind Iranian policy "isolated."