What happened in Iran last Friday was a fully planned but clumsily executed coup, intended to obliterate the last vestiges of democracy in the country. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini abducted the democratic revolution and instead of creating the free and inclusive republic he had promised during the months before the revolution--a republic, he said, that would have no clerics in any position of power--he established what he called Velayat-e Fagih or the rule of the Shiite Jurist. In this regime, a disproportionate share of power remains in the hands of an unelected cleric whose legitimacy rests not in the support of the people but of the divine.

At the same time, Ayatollah Khomeini was forced to heed the overwhelmingly democratic aspirations of the people at the time by allowing for a presidency that was to be directly elected by the people. The constitution thus became--and remains--an incongruent mix of despotism and democracy.