LET'S NOT FORGET - AT 9:45 P.M. ET:  The Iranian freedom fighters are still fighting, not that the White House seems to care.  The president appears far more concerned that his leftist pal has been ousted (properly and legally) from the presidency of Honduras.  Now that's a crisis!  But in Iran:

TEHRAN, July 1 -- Three opposition leaders, including a former president, openly defied Iran's top political and religious authorities Wednesday, vowing to resist a government they have deemed illegitimate after official certification of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection.

Their defiance in the face of harsh official denunciations and threats of arrest and prosecution appeared to dash the government's hopes of pressuring the opposition into accepting the disputed June 12 election.

Rather than dropping his complaints of extensive vote-rigging, leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi took his fight to a new level Wednesday, risking arrest by urging followers to continue their protests. After formal certification of the election results Monday night by the Guardian Council, a top supervisory body of Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists, Iranian authorities warned that no further protests would be tolerated.

COMMENT:  The insurrection of 1979, which unfortunately brought the mullahs to power, took months to develop.  The Iran story is far from over.  How it develops, though, will be influenced by the behavior of the United States.  Will we send the right signals, or join the so-called "realist" school, and deal with the regime as if nothing has happened?  That kind of "realism" generally turns out to be unrealistic, but don't tell its advocates. 

July 1, 2009