Viewed dispassionately, Iran’s elections represented a domestic struggle between a relatively more liberal and moderately less nationalistic urban class and the less affluent, less educated, more traditional population outside of Iran’s cities, Tehran in particular. This tension, the dispassionate observer might note, remains one of the principle sources of internal political tension even in most of the world’s advanced democracies, despite the fact that the ruling élite, regardless of their stylistic predilections, share certain assumptions and a certain consensus about how to run the country and how the country ought to interact with the rest of the world.