Thank you, Mr. Silva, for those very insightful questions.
The question of the election has various dimensions. I wish to highlight, first of all, that this was not an election; it was a selection. There were four candidates hand-picked by the supreme leader. Mr. Mousavi, who should be commended in many respects, was a former prime minister. Mr. Karoubi, who also should be commended for being the first Iranian leader to stand up and admit that there had been systematic rape and torture in Iran's prisons, was the former speaker of the house. The structure is that the supreme leader will determine who can run for elections or run for Parliament, and that's the facade of democracy that the regime has created to legitimize itself without actually having a democracy.
The point is that after the recent violence, many of the reformists who believed that they could change the Islamic Republic from within have now realized that it may not be possible. At the same time, the supreme leader, who for many years was above these kinds of political divisions, has now become regarded as merely one political faction among others. The Office of the Supreme Leader has lost its legitimacy in an irreparable way. It's impossible for that institution to ever retrieve the authority that it once had.
There are, of course, struggles within the hard-liners as well, between Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad. This gentleman, Mr. Mashai, whom I explained was in Canada, was one of the points of contention. The supreme leader pressured President Ahmadinejad to remove him from one position. Ahmadinejad defied him by putting him in another equally important position.
There are all sorts of cracks within the regime, and a big part of it is also about plunder of resources, about who controls which part of the economy. You know that the government of the U.K. recently froze a bank account under legislation relating to the nuclear program, and according to many reports, this bank account contained $1 billion in the name of Ayatollah Khamenei's son, Mojtaba. This is the link, once again, between resources and the power struggles that are happening within the country.
In the question on minorities, I imagine you're referring in particular to the recent terrorist bombing in Baluchistan. There is a real fear on the part of the non-violent democratic movement that as people in certain minorities become increasingly desperate, they will resort to violence. There were also two assassinations of government officials in the Kurdistan region of Iran.
My own sincere hope is that this democratic movement maintains its discipline and succeeds through non-violence, but one has to also anticipate the possibility that the longer this situation continues and the longer the international community helps to prop up this regime, the greater the prospect that some, discouraged by non-violence, will begin to resort to violent methods. That will be, I think, most unfortunate for the future of Iran and the kind of regime we will end up with.