Yesterday the Iranian people had their say. Or rather not, as their choice among candidates and umbrella coalitions was fairly limited due to the Council of Guardians disapproving of hundreds of candidates in a rigorous preliminary vetting process. Voters were forced to cast their ballot for the lesser of two evils (something they share with American and European democracies, although our best and brightest hopefuls are not banned from running but allow themselves to be caught with an escort girl). Even in the best of all circumstances the reformers will marginally expand their 40 seats of 2004, and the match will be decided within the various fractions of the conservative super-majority. Neither the reformers nor the pragmatists ever had a realistic chance of shaking the foundations of power in this year's sham elections. In fact, they're deeper rooted than ever before, as the CFR's brilliant Ray Takeyh analyzes:

"[The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah] Khamenei's nearly two-decade strategy of ensuring his political primacy has finally been realized. In a remarkable achievement, he has managed to marginalize the wily Rafsanjani and the still-popular Khatami. The future of Iran belongs to the Supreme Leader and dogmatic younger conservatives [Ahmadinejad, Larijani, Qalibaf] who outdo one another for his support and affection. Whatever the composition of the new Parliament, and whoever succeeds the office of the presidency next year, Iran has entered the age when a single mullah dominates all institutions and arbitrates all debates. Iran's Supreme Leader has never been more supreme."

These are the realities we have to put up with: the next Iranian majlis will be even less fit for work than the current U.S. Congress, with each hopeful desperately touting for the status of a favorite and trying to win the Supreme Leader's approval for 2009. True, Ali Larijani and Mohammad Qalibaf would advocate a less confrontational foreign policy than Ahmadinejad , but they're both grateful scions and faithful servants of the system that has spawned them. Larijani is the son-in-law of Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari, chief ideologue and martyr of the Revolution, and Qalibaf is a former Revolutionary Guard Air Force Commander - in fact, they personify the two pillars the Islamic republic rests on. Like hell they will do anything to ruffle Ayatollah Khameini and will get cracking in answering his expectations even before he has expressed them. And the Supreme Leader is known for a lot, but definitely not for being a man toying with ideas of radical, reformist change.

"By temperament and design, Khamenei has always been cautious and conservative, uneasy about radical solutions and self-defeating crusades. The Supreme Leader is one of the few Iranians that perceive the Islamic Republic as an attractive polity with no real need for reform or rejuvenation."

No, we shouldn't make any mistakes, with yesterday's elections, if not already in 2004, the last nail was driven in the reformers' coffins; they won't have any political say for years to come, and with them all hopes for change from within have waned. If change ever comes, it will be bottom-up, originating from grassroots civil society, but certainly not from among the establishment. Whatever candidate for the majlis or the presidency we keep our fingers crossed for, it doesn't change one iota with whom ultimate power in Iran truly rests; and even if the reformers are able to score a surprise victory, as they did in 1997, Khameini has demonstrated beyond any doubt that he has the ways and means to make sure they get nothing done. So it is the Supreme Leader we need to address, we need to win for a détente between the U.S. and Iran, and to whom we have to present that such a rapprochement is in his best interest. The price for him abandoning Iran's nuclear ambitions and perhaps even freezing Iran's support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, is the West accepting the facts as they are:

• us acknowledging that the Iranian people are gravely misgoverned but that it isn't ours to change this situation, thus bidding farewell to all pipe dreams of regime change and support for MEK, PJAK et al. - in fact, an execution of the 1981 Algiers Accords; quite a bitter recognition from a humanitarian point of view, but a necessary one


• and, as a new element, thanks to the so virtuously accomplished mission in Iraq, a recognition of Iran's status as a rising power in the Gulf, without whose acquiescence nothing happens in Iraq, and on whose cooperation the U.S. relies to get itself out of the Iraqi quagmire

These are incontrovertible facts, as incontrovertible as the Supreme Leader's sway over Iranian politics. It's high time for Washington to resign itself to these inconvenient truths and to make them the cornerstones of its negotiation strategy. The West will get a nuclear weapons-free and perhaps-even-more-constructive-in-its-regional-role Iran, and Khameini will have secured the cementation of the Islamic Republic's political system until he faces his creator or until the Iranian people take matters into their own hands. An acceptable win-win for both sides, as long as one isn't obsessed with the idea to return to the glorious days of the Shah ruling Iran as a submissive puppet on the strings of Anglo Iranian and Standard Oil (now BP and ExxonMobil).

One man with the experience and foresight to accept these realities was CENTCOM Commander Adm. William Fallon who resigned earlier this week. Him being given the pink slip was just a matter of days after the publication of an article in the Esquire that brought him close to outright insubordination and had him openly challenging his Commander-in-Chief. Nonetheless, the swiftness and brutality of his fall - he was not even granted to stay until a successor has been approved by the Senate - sparked a heated debate on whether aerial strikes on Iran are just around the corner.

I don't think so yet. I and all European analysts I talked to these days agree with Steve Clemons that Fallon was fired for falling out with high ranking, ultra-conservative Pentagon civilians and top notch brass, above all White House-sweetie Gen. David Petraeus, ever since his days as Commander, U.S. Pacific Command. Fallon saw this coming, went nap with the Esquire portrayal and lost the internal power struggle. All speculations about war with Iran aside, the true drama about Fallon's retirement is, as tjfxh noted in his (her?) comment, that the U.S. military has lost one of its most brilliant and most seasoned strategic thinkers and adepts of the region, who has basically engaged in the kind of shuttle diplomacy over the last year that actually should have been Foggy Bottom's job.

As I've repeatedly written here ever since the NIE was made public in December, war with Iran has been postponed, not abandoned. I believe the critical moments will be this early fall and next spring when both John McCain and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will have to convert elections dominated by economic concerns into referendums on national security and foreign policy, to be beefed up by unprecedented fearmongering, distortions of realities, and adding fuel to the fire in U.S.-Iranian relations like pathological pyromaniacs. Neither the Supreme Leader's ultimate supremacy over the Iranian political system, successfully completed in yesterday's elections, nor Adm. William Fallon's involuntary retirement have advanced this course, but they have significantly diminished our position to prevent the nightmare of war with Iran from happening.

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Hannes Artens is the author of The Writing on the Wall, the first anti Iran war novel.