Seeds of democracy planted in the Middle East are starting to bloom. Tens of thousands of Iranians demonstrated in Tehran in support of opposition candidate and former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi. He has appealed the results of Friday’s presidential election allegedly won by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in a landslide. The post-election protests are being called by some observers the most violent upheaval since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

There are streams of western optimism over the fact that Ahmedinejad – who is developing nuclear weapons in defiance of repeated U.N. resolutions and has publicly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”  – is having political difficulties at home. But even in the unlikely event another election is called and then won by the more moderate Mousavi, the radical mullahs who rose to power in 1979 will still be running the show. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ultimately responsible for Iran becoming the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. And Ahmedinejad’s nuclear initiatives and threats against Israel could not proceed without Khamenei’s blessing.