It is 1641 Come Again

• Muhammad Sahimi, an Iran expert at the University of Southern California in the US, said the government's crackdown was unlikely to stop the opposition.
• "If they were going to be cowed, they should have been by now," he told Al Jazeera.
• "Over the past six months, violence has been used, a lot of people have been arrested, tens of people have been killed, but yet you don't see any decrease in the level of demonstrations," he said.
• "The demands have gone way beyond cancellation of elections, and now people are demanding fundamental change in the system" of government, he told Al Jazeera.
• "The goal right now, is at the minimum, to weaken the position of [Iran's ] supreme leader, to make him sort of a figure head ... if not outright elimination of the supreme leader, and the writing of a new constitution." ("Iran MPs demand demo punishment," Al Jazeera, 29 Dec. 2009)